LAS VEGAS—It was hard to miss brands like Subaru and Metro by T-Mobile during last fall’s People’s Choice Awards on NBCUniversal’s E!. And that was the point of E!’s first-ever broadcast of the age-old show, which harnessed social media to distribute advertiser content far and wide, according to Advertising Sales & Partnerships President Laura Molen.
While the People’s Choice Awards had long been owned and produced by Procter & Gamble, “We wanted to make it new young and fresh in E!’s voice. And we recognized that if we just did it in the linear space it really wouldn’t be new and fresh. So we had to use our partnerships to offer marketers even greater opportunities for their content they were doing with us,” Molen says.
In this interview with Beet.TV at CES 2019, she explains how NBCU custom builds programs for marketers that span various channels and platforms in “one cohesive plan.” At the awards ceremony, Ebay sponsored backstage views while Subaru had a commanding presence near the red carpet, as Variety reports. Metro by T-Mobile sponsored a “live look-in” of a music performance by Rita Ora that garnered 2.3 million social media views—an audience that was 90% composed of 18-24-year- olds, according to Molen.
“So it’s that kind of impact that we’re looking to help marketers make by distributing their content wherever the consumer is. On Telemundo, we see this all the time.”
NBCU has social partners that include Snap and Twitter, while its Social Synch offering makes it easy for brands to reach audiences across various social media platforms.
“We sell all of our content, even if it’s distributed across other people’s platforms,” Molen says. “We give our marketers one cohesive plan, making it very easy for them to buy.”
She draws a parallel between premium content and most of social media because “that’s where the conversation is around premium content and long-form content.” Her conversations at CES include improving the commercial experience so that consumers enjoy the content better “but they also engage more deeply around a marketer’s brand.”
Some advertisers are rediscovering the value of premium content, having seen “a lot of shiny objects” and had issues with certain platforms. “Working with NBCUniversal we can give them the things that they need in data, in distribution, in commercial innovation, in ROI and attribution.”
This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2019. The series is sponsored by NBCUniversal. For more coverage, please visit this page.
