Effective + TV = EffecTV?! Find out how this company maximizes the power of multi-screen television! [Monday: Marketing Marvels]
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word, “Fast?”
A race car?
The neural connections in your body?
The speed of light?
We all have different answers to this question.
For this company, “fast” means the ability to “scale outward in terms of speed while adding more advanced functionality.”
Comcast Corporation is an American telecommunications conglomerate headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is the second largest broadcasting and cable television company in the world by revenue and the largest home Internet service provider in the US.
As the parent company of media corporation NBCUniversal, Comcast produces feature films and TV programs intended for over-the-air and cable television broadcast.
What are some of the things Comcast does to provide better networking services to its customers?
In 2018, the company unveiled its new go-to market campaign called, “Beyond Fast.”
Comcast used that campaign title because it was in line with the company’s fast-paced goal of reaching a new Ethernet customer every 3 minutes and gaining a new cable customer every 17 seconds.
With that mindset, imagine how many customers and prospects Comcast could possibly reach in a day!
The idea behind the “Beyond Fast” campaign was to retain the company’s ability to improve the speed of its network services while integrating advanced functionality.
With the help of Comcast ActiveCore (a software-defined networking platform), the company was able to add 4G LTE backup and in-streaming TV services to its offerings.
… and not just that!
Comcast also added advanced functionality to its services without compromising the simplicity and manageability of customers’ networks.
To raise awareness about the campaign and its new product offerings, Comcast launched TV commercials about “Beyond Fast.”
These included the “Beyond: Fast Anthem” and “Beyond Fast: Beyond Expectations.”
In these TV ads, Comcast said it’s not enough for companies and business leaders to be just fast. Enterprises and individuals alike need to move beyond to keep up with the changing times.
By showing in the commercials how an interactive mirror at a makeup store and a 4G power backup at a grocery store give consumers what they want, Comcast guaranteed that its services can also provide what consumers want and need by pinpointing network problems, allowing one-touch conference calls, and offering sharp surveillance footage.
Aside from the “Beyond Fast” campaign, Comcast used rebranding strategies to further improve its services and reach more customers.
One of these strategies?
The Comcast Spotlight rebrand into “EffecTV” in 2019!
As the advertising sales division of the company, Comcast Spotlight, now known as EffecTV, also broke away from offering traditional advertising solutions to enterprise customers.
How?
By redesigning products to provide advertisers with more data-driven capabilities and advanced technology to reach audiences through whatever platform.
In other words, maximizing the power of multi-screen television!
[Multi-screen Television: This refers to content that is transformed into multiple formats for display on various devices such as TV, mobile phones, tablets, computers, etc.]
According to Marcien Jenckes, President of Comcast Advertising,
“Our new name, EffecTV, reflects our commitment to drive better performance for our advertising clients. By applying data to television advertising in new ways, across all screens, and making it easier to buy than ever before, we’re transforming TV advertising. We combine the targeting and measurement of digital with the reach and impact of television―an unbeatable combination.”
See? Through EffecTV, Comcast not only gives itself an edge in terms of business and marketing but also helps other enterprises reach their target market!
As part of the rebrand, Comcast also launched 2 new products to further improve TV advertising:
Audience Intelligence
This allowed advertisers to run data-informed linear TV schedules to reach their target market at the local, regional, and national level.
With data that went beyond age and gender demographics, marketers were able to build campaigns that reached specific groups of consumers such as SUV buyers, coffee lovers, makeup enthusiasts, etc.
Addressable Full Avail
This enabled advertisers to target custom audience segments at the household level.
Here, marketers could choose up to 5 different creative units for a 30-second spot by using Comcast viewership and third-party data to determine which ad unit should be sent to a particular household.
For example:
An automobile advertiser could send copies about trucks to truck intender Comcast households, copies about sports cars to sports car intender Comcast households, and default brand copies to other homes in selected markets.
Through this, marketers benefitted from both the broad reach of their ads and the addressable targeting for relevant households.
Did the “EffecTV” rebrand generate positive results for Comcast?
It did!
Just 10 days after the launch, Comcast’s social media followers increased by 5%, with an average of 1,000 followers added to each of its LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.
The company’s rebrand-specific content was shared by followers nearly 1,000 times across different social media platforms, garnering 1 million media impressions, 2,500 clicks, and 2,200 reactions.
Additionally, “EffecTV” saw a 60% increase in website traffic, which led to 40% of online users availing of the advertising service!
These numbers show that the rebrand delivered positive results for Comcast and other marketers. Simply stated, “EffecTV” was truly EFFECTIVE!
In the past five years, Comcast Corporation has recorded revenues of:
- USD 80.4 billion in 2016
- USD 85.0 billion in 2017
- USD 94.5 billion in 2018
- USD 108.9 billion in 2019
- USD 103.6 billion in 2020
Clearly, we can see that the “Beyond Fast” campaign and the “EffecTV” rebrand made positive contributions to the company as it recorded higher revenues in 2018 and 2019.
Comcast Corporation’s Earning Power: Valens Research vs. As-reported numbers
Comcast Corporation (CMCS.A:USA) makes for a great case study that we come back to regularly. One great reason?
The company has proven itself to be a better earning power generator than investors might think.
So, how well has CMCS.A been growing its business in the past years?
The research doesn’t lie—nor do the results. Earning power (the blue bars) continues to show results higher on average than what traditional databases show.
The blue bars in the chart above represent CMCS.A’s earning power (Uniform Return On Assets). CMCS.A has seen generally improving profitability since acquiring AT&T Broadband in the early 2000s. Since 2005, Uniform ROA has consistently expanded from 3% in 2005 to 13% levels in 2019-2020.
The global ROA is just 6%.
The orange bars are the company’s as-reported financial information. If you relied on these numbers, you will see a company with understated profitability. As-reported ROA (return on assets, a measure of earning power) only ranged from 2% to 6% in the past sixteen years. Its as-reported ROA in 2020 was only at 4%, which is 3 times lower than its Uniform ROA in 2020.
That’s what you’ll see in Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, and most other databases.
The company’s stock price also performed better than the rest of the stock market over the decade, which we can see in the blue line in the chart below. Its returns have been well above the market.
The numbers show that CMCS.A has been doing well and making a profit.
For over 50 years since its establishment, Comcast’s approach to reaching its customers and helping its customers connect with their own customers has been designed to optimize targeted advertising, maximize budget, and deliver positive results.
As the company looks to the future of business and marketing, it will seek out new technologies that help customers make their lives more convenient and productive.
Any words to describe Comcast’s marketing strategy?
We think these terms are appropriate:
BEYOND FAST and EFFECTIVE!
About The Dynamic Marketing Communiqué’s
“Monday Marketing Marvels”
Too often, industry experts and the marketing press sing the praises of some company’s marketing strategy.
…Only for the audience to later find out that their product was a flop, or worse, that the company went bankrupt.
The true ROI in marketing can’t be separated from the business as a whole.
What good is a marketing case study if one can’t prove that the company’s efforts actually paid off?
At the end of the day, either the entire business is successful or it isn’t. And the role of marketing is always paramount to that success.
Every Monday, we publish a case study that highlights the world’s greatest marketing strategies.
However, the difference between our case studies and the numerous ones out there, is that we will always make certain that the firm really did generate and demonstrate earning power worthy of study in the first place (compliments of Valens Research’s finance group).
By looking at the true earnings of a company, we can now rely on those successful businesses to get tips and insights on what they did right.
We’ll also study the greatest marketing fails and analyze what they did wrong, or what they needed to improve on. We all make our mistakes, but better we learn from others’ mistakes—and earlier, rather than later.
Hope you found this week’s marketing marvel interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next week’s Monday Marketing Marvels!
Cheers,
Kyle Yu
Head of Marketing
Valens Dynamic Marketing Capabilities
Powered by Valens Research
www.valens-research.com
