WCNC Creates A Home-Grown Super Hero

Thanks to a super creative and effective 30-second spot, Bill McGinty’s kids think he’s a super hero.

“It’s hysterical,” says McGinty, the consumer and investigative reporter for WCNC, the Belo-owned NBC affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. (DMA 25). McGinty also anchors the weekday afternoon newscasts at 5:30.

Just two years ago, McGinty was the new consumer reporter in town. Today, he’s a household name, like Mr. Clean.

“Oh my God,” he says, “I was in the supermarket the other day and this guy looks at me and says: ‘You’re that McGinty guy’.”

“The image promotion started with POIs (proof of image spots) where we gave viewers a glimpse of the type of commitment he has to look out for them in his daily consumer stories,” says Luanne Stuart, WCNC”s creative services director.

WCNC: McGinty ‘Passion’

Simply shot with an SLR camera, the spots feature McGinty speaking with honesty and sincerity. “The promo shows his contempt for those who would push around the little guy and his promise that he won’t stand for it,” Stuart says. 

Viewers started calling the station asking for the ‘guy who helps people’.

“He exemplifies NBC Charlotte’s commitment to ‘looking out for you,” Stuart says. “When they have nowhere else to turn, they turn to Bill.”

WCNC: McGinty, The ‘Guy Who Helps People’

While knowing that he looks out for people is important, knowing his name is even more critical.

Early in my career, I worked at an ad agency that specialized in media marketing, and one of the tenets I was taught is the value of ID recognition — the name, the face, the place — when it comes to measuring the on-air talents’ “Q” score.

The Q score identifies the familiarity and appeal of an on-air personality. If viewers know you and like you, get a higher Q score. So whenever one of our stations hired a major new on-air talent, we welcomed them into the market with an ID/recognition spot, a spot that mentioned their name and where they worked — a lot. Much like what these recent spots do:

KOVR: CBS 13 Sacramento

So in Charlotte, what should you do if you’ve been duped, conned or swindled? Get McGinty.

WCNC: ‘Get McGinty’

“Since the ad came out,” McGinty says, “the number of emails and phone calls have gone up tenfold.” His in-box is so full that the station had to give him another specially created email address to handle all the volume of story leads, and as McGinty says, “it’s hard to enterprise stories if you don’t have leads from viewers.”

WCNC: ‘Get McGinty’ Couch

“This is the best job I’ve ever had,” McGinty says. “It’s so rewarding to be able to help people who tell me they were getting nowhere until they called me.”

Does kind of sound like a super hero, doesn’t it?

Market Share by Paul Greeley is all about marketing and promotion at TV stations and appears every Monday. Read other Market Share columns here. If you have some ideas or stories you want to share, please let me know. You can reach Paul Greeley at [email protected] or at 817-578-6324.