To Bolster Audience, Soaps Turn to the Web

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To Bolster Audience, Soaps Turn to the Web; New York Times
Topic Started: Mar 2 2006, 07:51 AM (47 Views)
RogerD	Mar 2 2006, 07:51 AM Post #1
Advanced Member Posts: 198 Group: Admin Member #2 Joined: February 7, 2006	To Bolster Audience, Soaps Turn to the Web Daytimedollars.com will promote the serials "As the World Turns" and "Guiding Light." By STUART ELLIOT Published: March 2, 2006 THE advertising giant that popularized the soap opera, first on radio and then on television, is going online with a multimillion-dollar promotional campaign to stimulate interest in its two remaining shows. The advertiser is Procter & Gamble, whose sponsorship of daytime serials from "Ma Perkins" to "The Edge of Night" to "Another World" led to their being called soap operas. The sobriquet, from the 1930's, was derived from the soap powders and detergents Procter sold under brand names like Cheer, Dreft, Duz, Ivory Snow, Oxydol and Tide. To help reverse a long-term decline in the ratings for the two soaps that Procter still produces, "As the World Turns" and "Guiding Light," the company will sponsor a watch-and-win loyalty rewards program under the name Daytime Dollars. The promotion, involving four agencies owned by the Publicis Groupe, will be housed on a Web site (daytimedollars.com) that went live this week; the promotion is scheduled to begin March 13 on the two shows and run through September. The promotion is emblematic of two trends that are remaking the way marketers like Procter seek closer connections with fickle and elusive consumers. One trend is the growth of loyalty promotions, from venerable efforts like the AAdvantage frequent-flier plan sponsored by American Airlines, which has its 25th anniversary this year, to newcomers like My Coke Rewards, a program from Coca-Cola allowing consumers to collect points redeemable for prizes valued at more than $50 million. "This is something we feel is the next generation of the way we need to market to consumers," whether they are "lovers of Coke or people considering Coke," said Katie Bayne, senior vice president for Coca-Cola Brands at Coca-Cola North America in Atlanta. The other trend is the increasing use of new media by packaged-goods marketers like Procter to augment a longtime reliance on media like TV. For example, consumers will be able to manage My Coke Rewards accounts on the Web (mycokerewards.com), and the two Procter soap operas are available as audio podcasts at cbs.com/netcast. "The soap genre is a perfect fit for the Web because this audience is rabid for more information," said Annamarie Kostura, vice president for NBC Daytime Programs at NBC Entertainment in Burbank, Calif. NBC Entertainment, part of the NBC Universal unit of General Electric, will introduce on March 14 an online campaign for one of its two soap operas, "Passions," at a dedicated Web site (passionsvendetta.com) and on the regular site (nbc.com/passions). The "Passions Vendetta" campaign, like one last fall that drew more than 10 million page views, will be sponsored by the Garnier Fructis and Maybelline New York brands of L'Oréal. Also coming from NBC Daytime will be a line of clothing inspired by a "Passions" character, Fancy Crane — love those soap names — and sold only through cranecouture.com, a Web site that is to go live on April 6. Under the newest Procter brand of Daytime Dollars, audiences will be offered enticements to tune in to the weekday episodes on CBS of "As the World Turns," which dates to 1956, and "Guiding Light," which began on radio in 1937 and transferred to TV in 1952. There will be cash awards as well as so-called experiential prizes, like a chance to win kisses on the air from favorite soap characters. The Procter promotion is intended to address a daunting challenge that makes typical soap plot problems like amnesia or evil twins seem easily solvable: a significant loss of viewers of daytime dramas in the last decade. The nine soaps currently on ABC, CBS and NBC have all experienced steep audience declines as a result of changes that include the number of women who work outside the home and the growing appeal of alternative daytime fare like talk shows. According to ratings data from the Nielsen Media Research unit of VNU, "As the World Turns" declined from 5.48 million viewers in the 1994-95 season to 3.4 million in 2004-5, while "Guiding Light" fell from 4.97 million viewers in 1994-95 to 2.9 million in 2004-5. The most recent Nielsen data for the 2005-6 season, Sept. 19 through Feb. 19, indicate further erosion, to 3.26 million viewers for "As the World Turns" and 2.8 million for "Guiding Light." "We are obviously aware of the complicated landscape," said Brian T. Cahill, vice president and director for operations and strategic initiatives at TeleVest Daytime Programs in New York, which produces the two soaps for a Procter division, Procter & Gamble Productions. "The shows are brands owned by Procter & Gamble," he added, "and Daytime Dollars is all about delivering people to those brands and increasing their participation in and affinity for those brands." TeleVest is part of the Starcom MediaVest Group unit of Publicis. The other Publicis units working on Daytime Dollars are Arc Worldwide, a marketing services agency that created the concept; Manning Selvage & Lee, handling a public relations campaign including online message boards and blogs; and SMG United, for tasks like the online ad strategy. "We heard a lot of different ideas," Mr. Cahill of TeleVest said, "and we thought this was a way to involve our viewers in the shows on another level and to show them how much we appreciate their loyalty." Mr. Cahill acknowledged that the phrase Daytime Dollars is evocative of a TV mainstay of the 1950's and 1960's, "Dialing for Dollars," which offered cash prizes to viewers of live programs on local stations, and frequently appeared opposite network soap operas — on the theory that one way to woo stalwart soap viewers from their "stories" was with money. "On some level, maybe it's a little 'retro,' " Mr. Cahill said, "but it has that contemporary punch, cross-channeling them from the Internet, where we know they're spending time, to our TV shows."


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