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The Washington Post
September 23, 2001
ABC Promoters, Feverishly Forging an 'Alias' Identity;
Publicity Strategy for Spy Series Is Anything but a Hush-Hush Operation
by Paul Farhi
When "Alias," ABC's girl spy series, debuts later this month, the most
important people surrounding the show may not be star Jennifer Garner
or writer-producer J.J. Abrams. If "Alias" becomes the hit ABC is
counting on, it could well be due to a couple of obscure network suits
named Alan Cohen and Michael Benson.
For the past five months, Cohen and Benson have been beavering away on
one of the most extensive and complex hard sells in TV history. From
their perch in Los Angeles, the two men have been field generals of a
small army of some 100 white-collar foot soldiers -- researchers, film
editors, graphic artists, print and radio copywriters.
As executive vice president and senior vice president, respectively, of
ABC's marketing department, their mission has been to get you to notice
-- and perhaps even watch -- this new TV show. Before their work is
complete -- that is, when "Alias" debuts on Sept. 30 -- they hope to
achieve nothing less than this: reaching more than 90 percent of all TV
viewers with word about the new series at least eight times.
The promotion of a show like "Alias" has become a critical, if little
understood, art of the TV trade. With 35 new series coming this fall on
the six major broadcast networks and with old favorites being juggled
into new time slots, telling viewers the who, what and when of a new
show has taken on an ever-increasing importance and sophistication.
"In an era when there were three networks, [promotion] wasn't that
important," says Cohen, 44. "You'd put on a show and people would find
it. Now, if you do that, your show gets lost. There's just too much
clutter and competition out there."
Besides, "Alias" is too valuable to ABC and its parent, Walt Disney
Co., to simply coast on whim and buzz. The show's first episode,
produced by Disney's Touchstone unit, is an effects-laden spectacle on
the scale of a modest action-adventure film. It tells the story of
Sydney Bristow (Garner), a comely graduate student who is recruited as
an operative by a shadowy international agency apparently affiliated
with the CIA. But Sydney doesn't just spend her days rearranging bad
guys' faces with roundhouse kicks, "Buffy"-style. She also has a rich
and complicated personal life, what with an oh-so-sensitive Brit fiance
(Edward Atterton), an oh-so-insensitive estranged father (Victor
Garber) and a bummed-out would-be suitor (Bradley Cooper). Think
Felicity-meets-007.
ABC is hawking "Alias" hard because the show figures as the network's
best hope for a hit -- something it hasn't had since the tiring "Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire" all but took over its schedule in 1999.
ABC's four other new shows (sitcoms "Bob Patterson" and "According to
Jim," and dramas "Philly" and "Thieves") are either critically shaky or
up against killer competition, and in some cases both.
Attesting to its expectations, ABC has scheduled "Alias" in the
sweetest of sweet spots, on Sundays at 9 p.m. -- the hour when more
people are watching TV than any other time during the week. Hence the
promotional executives say hooking viewers in Week 1 of the show could
be critical to its success.
These high hopes prompted Cohen and Benson to begin their buildup for
"Alias" in mid-May, more than four months before its debut. Their early
TV ads were mere teasers; in one, a sinister-looking character asks a
bound, seated Sydney over and over, "Who do you work for?" At the same
time, the team put together an infomercial-like 30-second spot called
"ABC in Production," which showed brief interviews with the stars and
behind-the-scenes glimpses. The goal, says Benson, 38, was simply "to
get the name out there and raise the intrigue level. We didn't want to
give away too much too soon."
This summer, the campaign swung into its main phase: They began selling
different parts of the same show to different parts of the audience, a
marketing technique known as "segmentation."
To appeal to women, Cohen and Benson began salting ABC's daytime soaps
with 15- and 30-second commercials that show Garner's character as an
independent young woman with an array of intriguing relationships. One
spot ends with Garner being rescued from hit men by a familiar face.
"Daddy?" she asks in surprise as his black sedan fishtails to her aid.
Conversely, men who watch ABC's "Monday Night Football" and "The Drew
Carey Show" have seen "Alias" promoted as a babe- and brawl-fest:
Garner in sexy evening wear or kinky magenta wig, Garner kicking down
doors and blowing up adversaries, Garner being chased by trigger-happy
hoodlums.
The segmentation extends to the style of editing -- faster and more
frenzied for male viewers, more leisurely for women -- and to the
music. Female viewers were more likely to see promos that made ironic
use of the old Doris Day song "Que Sera, Sera," while the male audience
was soaking up the action ads to the pounding strains of the Guess
Who's "American Woman."
But the promoters' bluntest tool may be raw air time. Cohen and Benson
have been able to place literally dozens of ads for "Alias" all over
ABC's schedule, from early-morning programs like "Good Morning America"
to late-night shows such as "Nightline" and "Politically Incorrect."
The cost of this saturation campaign is nominally free, since ABC
traditionally sets aside plenty of time for promoting its new shows
during the summer and early fall. If he were advertising toothpaste,
Cohen estimates he'd have had to shell out "tens of millions of
dollars" to get the same amount of exposure on the network.
This jackhammer promotional power extends to ABC's sister networks on
cable; "Alias" ads are also showing up on Disney-owned ESPN and ESPN2,
as well as Lifetime and A&E cable, which are part owned by Disney.
Indeed, creating such an extended and largely invisible chain of hype
was one of the primary rationales for the media mega-mergers of the
past five years. All of the major networks employ similar strategies,
since all of them are owned by giant media and entertainment
conglomerates.
But the blitz doesn't end there. There are radio ads for "Alias," and
bus shelter posters that bear Garner's face and the slogan "Sometimes
the truth hurts." There's also something called a "viral marketing"
campaign, in which ABC has been ginning up word-of-mouth buzz by
handing out guides to new shows on street corners and dropping plugs
into Internet chat rooms. It's hard to tell whether "wolfdogg424" on
ABC's "Alias" chat room ("I'd love to run into her on campus!") is
really a legitimate fan or an ABC employee pretending to be one.
For additional marketing muscle, ABC has created an alliance with
cell-phone maker Nokia. The company has taken ads in People magazine
and Entertainment Weekly to say it will be the exclusive sponsor of
"Alias's" debut episode. Nokia phones pop up throughout the first
episode, although ABC says the program was produced before the ad deal
was struck. However, thanks to a product-placement deal, later episodes
are being reworked to feature the phones.
The tie-in with Nokia will help Cohen and Benson create one more burst
of plugs for "Alias" as D-Day -- debut day -- approaches. Next week,
the ABC ad wizards will start telling viewers that the "Alias" premiere
will be a "special" commercial-free presentation (actually, Nokia will
have 60-second ads immediately before and after the show). "The notion
is that ABC is so proud of this show, and thinks it's so special, that
we won't interrupt it for commercials," Benson says.
Could all this relentless tub-thumping backfire? Could viewers wind up
so sick of the come-ons that they refuse to sample the merchandise, or
arrive with expectations that can't be met? Cohen and Benson
acknowledge that a network always risks viewer fatigue. Just not in
this case, claims Benson: "A big part of this has been playing up the
mystery of not really knowing who she is. We wanted to leave that
vague. We tried not to give away too much. If you come in knowing
everything, you may not stick around."
So far, tracking research on the campaign points to increasing viewer
awareness of the show and growing "intent to watch." Those are
encouraging signs to ABC. The suits there know they won't get many
second chances.
"We have to open it big," like a theatrical film, says Cohen. "That's
not necessarily traditional thinking in network TV because there's
always a Week 2 and a Week 3 to catch up. But we take the approach that
you've got to get people to watch the first time out. Some shows, no
matter how great they may be, if the audience isn't there at first,
they're not going to get there. Ever."
© The Washington Post Company 2001
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