A series of ads will run in both BusinessWeek's Chinese and regional editions for several months. CCTV is also eyeing other platforms for the campaign, including airport hubs and inflight magazines. The new ads seek to persuade people holding the purse strings in MNCs that advertising on CCTV represents good value for money. The new ads, developed by Ogilvy & Mather, use the tagline: 'Everybody's watching CCTV'. "Now is the time to change the perception of corporate leaders," explained account director, Fareeda Cassumbhoy. Advertising on CCTV had been regarded as wasteful by many foreign firms when they were concentrating their energies on major cities.
A concerted courtship of MNCs was orginally initiated by former director of advertising, Guo Zhen-Xi, now in line to take over CCTV's advertising and economic information division after being recently promoted to become chief supervisor of CCTV's Economic Channel. Guo has been replaced by Xia Hongbo, a former associate director in the ad department.