Entertainment
Multi-Million Dollar Campaign
Winfrey Channel Is Gearing Up for It’s Debut
Chronicle News Services
NEW YORK--In a one-minute ad that starts Friday in movie theaters across the country, the voice of the Black Eyed Peas front man, will.i.am, calls out to dreamers, believers and “tomorrow leaders.”
Then, looking positively radiant, Oprah Winfrey looks at her audience and asks: “What if I could take every hero who inspired me; every lesson that motivated me; every opportunity that was ever given to me; and give it to you?”
This is the first big-budget promo for OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network, the cable channel from Miss Winfrey and Discovery Communications.
The channel, nearly three years in the making, is only one month away from its debut.
“Now, here we are,” Miss Winfrey says in the ad. “This is our day. This is our moment.”
To….to what?
In the background, will.i.am is still singing: “To own it.”
Aside from the fact that will.i.am dreamed up a song specifically for OWN, the channel is being introduced to the country in a relatively low-key way, with the cinema ad and some Web ads that started appearing earlier this week.
“Our Phase 1, which is what we’re doing right now, is, ‘What is OWN? Where is OWN? When is OWN?,’ ” Darren Schillace, the channel’s vice president of consumer marketing, said Thursday in an interview.
He cannot direct viewers to the channel yet--the space is still occupied by the Discovery Health Channel, which will be replaced by OWN on Jan. 1, 2011--and he knows, as he put it, that “no one’s planning now what they’re going to watch in January.” So the ads this month are about building awareness--and also about correcting misconceptions that the channel will feature Miss Winfrey at all times.
(Far from it--she has committed to 70 original hours each year.)
“Quite frankly, we need to manage expectations,” Mr. Schillace said, as he explained why “we’re not doing any of those big buzzy things for the sake of buzz.”
“We organically have the biggest buzz driver in the world in Oprah,” he added.
Of all the scenes in the new cinema ad, the most symbolic one might be the man who is walking a tightrope while clutching a bright orange balloon. The eyes of the television industry are on OWN, in part because of the amount of time it has taken to get up and running.
The joint venture between Miss Winfrey and Discovery for OWN was announced in January 2008.
With brief shots of crowds, dancers and a smiling baby, the ad conveys that “this is celebratory,” Mr. Schillace said. The channel is buying movie screen ad time with both Screenvision and NCM, the two dominant in-theater ad distributors.
The ad will be adapted for television, both for the portfolio of channels owned by Discovery and for outside cable channels.
The multimillion-dollar campaign is being coordinated internally by OWN, which is based in Los Angeles. Already, there are commercials on Discovery Health telling viewers about the imminent changes.
During one of the few shows that OWN will keep, the Monday night documentary series, “Mystery Diagnosis,” commercial spots tell of its future time slot on OWN, Wednesday night.
There is also a print ad in Vanity Fair this month promoting “Master Class,” a profile series that will feature Maya Angelou, Jay Z, Diane Sawyer and others.
Mr. Schillace said building awareness of OWN’s individual shows was a priority both before and after the Jan. 1 start date.
But so much of the interest will fall on Miss Winfrey’s shoulders.
She is sure to steer people to OWN during a Barbara Walters prime-time special on ABC on Dec. 9, entitled “Oprah’s Next Chapter.”
Miss Winfrey has also, on three occasions, recorded video and audio for the OWN marketing campaign, and her face is prominent in the display ads that started appearing on Websites this week.
OWN is buying the space through ad networks to aim at women ages 25 to 54, the demographic that it hopes will make up the bulk of its audience. It is preparing other display ads that will show snippets of OWN programming.
Some of the ads this month will direct people to a tool at oprah.com to look up the channel position of OWN on local cable and satellite systems.
There is also a toll-free number, 1(888) GET-OWN.
Miss Winfrey tells callers, “See you on OWN New Year’s Day.”
In mid-December, the campaign will expand a bit with a limited number of billboards, including one in Times Square and one on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, there will be some countdown clock spots on radio and on the Web. “Oprah’s so recognizable, it makes for really powerful radio,” Mr. Schillace said.
Maybe the song in the cinema ad, “Own It,” could make it to radio, too. The song is a bonus track on the Black Eyed Peas’ new album, “The Beginning.”
To hear OWN executives tell it, “Own It” was born out of a conversation between will.i.am and the channel’s chief creative officer, Lisa Erspamer, who said she was looking for a theme for “Your OWN Show: Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star,” a competition show that will have its debut in January.
A half-hour later, will.i.am called back with the song.
Undeniably catchy, its chorus repeats the words, “I wanna own it,” and one of its verses calls out Miss Winfrey: “I wanna do it big like Oprah.”
