KING Seattle’s ‘Promise’ Campaign Delivers

“On the average,” observed advertising legend David Ogilvy, “five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.” This dictum holds true for TV ads, if you define visuals and graphics as “headlines” and the voiceover as “body copy.”

Indeed, it was just such a masterful combination that won the 2011 Promax Local Gold Award for “Best Copywriting” for KING in Seattle and its “Promise” campaign.

“It was truly a collaborative campaign,” says Cherylynne Crowther, the Belo station’s director of integrated creative services, “just about everyone on the staff was involved.”

Although Crowther wrote the actual copy with freelance producer Lisa Phelps Dawes, the “promise” of the campaign’s title drew on the collective insights of KING’s veteran promotion team about the long and loyal relationship between the audience and the station’s seasoned anchors and beat reporters.

The campaign “really calls out our preeminent talent,” says Crowther. “The people featured have been on KING 5 from between 10 and 35 years.” Shot in black and white and captured in dramatic closeups or poses, each familiar face shares the screen with a single-word caption — QUESTION … PROTECT … DELIVER — that underscores the topical specialty or reputation of the reporter or anchor. Each of these words is revealed with a different animated effect, resolving in bold Helvetica caps, timed to punctuate the pauses in the spoken copy:

There are a lot of words that describe us…

How we work, what we value, who we are…

But when you have a passion for what you do,

Every word becomes — a promise.

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A major goal of the “Promise” campaign was to reflect their viewers’ belief that KING talent is working to empower them. That conclusion was based partly on reading station research, but more so, says Crowther, on her staff’s gut sense of how the audience feels.

That’s a reliable barometer when a promotion team has logged a lot of years at the same station (Crowther is now running creative services at KING for the second time, having interrupted her tenure with eight years as VP of marketing for MSNBC.)  Other credits on the spot include Executive Producer Deborah Ellis, Producers Ryan Subica and Lisa Phelps Dawes, Editor Enrico Benjamin and Director of Photography Mark Feijo.

While the “Promise” campaign was designed to run entirely in black and white, that plan was altered by some promotional serendipity. A few weeks prior to its December 2010 debut, KING ran a promo that showcased the station’s trademark rain slickers that have earned the nickname “yellowjackets.”

“Community work is a core component of the KING5 brand,” says Crowther, “so a lot of our viewers have met our talent in person over the years.” In fact the yellow slickers are so ubiquitous that in Seattle the term “Yellowjackets” has become a generic label for all the media at a news story. So to protect their visual turf, the yellow slickers, and sometimes the golden KING5 logo, were highlighted within the black and white video. Only the final talent shot was presented in full color.

As for audience reaction to the “Promise” campaign, “We had people calling up to compliment the spot,” says Crowther — a reaction reinforced in a more formal pre- and post-attitudinal survey. And while it’s always hazardous to credit ratings success to a single campaign, the February 2011 sweeps brought only good news for KING. Each of its newscasts was No. 1 among adults 25-54, most with a hefty share increase over November 2010, ranging from 9% at 5 p.m. to a whopping 33% for the 5 a.m. early news.

Encouraged, KING has built upon the campaign, adding a series of :30s to highlight such news team stalwarts as consumer reporters Jesse Jones and Owen Lei and the “KING5 Investigators,” Linda Byron, Susannah Frame and aviation specialist Chris Ingalls. This fall, the campaign added radio spots to the media mix, and the campaign is being freshened for a re-launch this month.

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“Everyone struggles with how to talk about news without spouting clichés,” says Crowther. “The Promise campaign was somewhat aspirational. We wanted to convey a positive feeling that our talent represents the best values of the Pacific Northwest.”

Market Share/PromaxBDA Gold salutes the best on-air promotion throughout North America, many of them winners of Local Awards from the PromaxBDA Station Summit in Las Vegas. Read other stories in the series here.Contributing Editor Arthur Greenwald, himself a veteran promotion manager, profiles these winning campaigns and the creative and strategic talent behind them. Want to suggest other future topic? Write to Arthur at [email protected].