National Geographic Channel's 24-hour distribution has surpassed 20
million homes in Asia, where the channel has sealed several regional
advertising deals.
The Washington-based network has signed its first global advertising and
marketing deal with Toyota Motors, which will be the exclusive sponsor
for its 52-episode weekly signature series, Adventure Starts Here.
The multimillion dollar global marketing pact with Toyota will last for
two years, and National Geographic Channel International president and
CEO David Haslingden said the deal reinforced the network's global
positioning.
Toyota's global marketing deal will also extend to the media group's
other entities, such as its websites and local marketing initiatives, as
well as the sponsoring of another new series, called Next Wave.
The Hong Kong Tourist Association has also formed a global marketing
alliance with the documentary channel to promote tourism to the
territory from within the region.
The integrated marketing campaign will be running on National
Geographic's media assets, including magazines, web sites and television
network.
Kicking off in October, the joint marketing campaign will last for
"several years", said NatGeo Channel Asia sales and marketing VP Deborah
Armstrong.
As part of the innovative marketing pact, five National Geographic
photographers and two Hong Kong-based photographers were assigned to
film Hong Kong.
A series of vignettes entitled "I See Hong Kong" covered different
aspects of Hong Kong's daily life and culture, ranging from the Bun
Festival, to Dragon Boat racing and the Flower Market.
"Our audiences will see Hong Kong through the eyes of the world's top
photographers, bringing to life the colour, diversity and contrasts of
the territory and its people in a fresh way," explained Ms
Armstrong.
The network has also signed a partnership deal with Action Asia to
launch the National Geographic Channel Action Asia Challenge in the
region.
Four one-hour adventure documentary programmes will air on the network
covering Asia, Australia and Europe, as well as global terrestrial
televisions.
Youth involvement will be a big part of the Challenge series: both
NatGeo and Action Asia will roll out regionwide programmes such as
school seminars, roadshows and activity days.
Ms Armstrong said the Challenge so far had found two corporate sponsors
and range of other local sponsors.
In addition to traditional advertising and sponsorship sales, she said
it was important to "bring something unique to media buy".
National Geographic's brand heritage was a crucial asset for advertisers
which want to associate with in their branding campaign.
"It (NatGeo Channel) might be a young channel here, but it's not a new
brand," said Ms Armstrong, who added the channel had brought in 250 new
advertisers this year.
Regional advertisers accounted for just about 30 per cent of these 250
new clients; but dominated in terms of spend.
Meanwhile, NatGeo will launch a 24-hour Portuguese language channel in
Brazil in November, with the acquisition of the Superstation
distribution.
NatGeo Channel will launch in the US at the end of this year and it will
roll out daypart and 24-hour services in Japan respectively in the last
quarter of 2000 and third quarter of 2001, said its Asia managing
director Ward Platt.
The network plans to roll out more localised portal sites in Asia,
linking up to its core nationalgeographic.com sites.
India was the network's fastest growing market in Asia, with
subscription jumping 54 per cent to 12 million homes.
Distribution in Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia also saw a significant growth
to respectively 1.1 million, 4.8 million and 375,000 homes.
Ms Armstrong said rating figures from Peoplemeters in Taiwan and India
showed that NatGeo was one of the most popular cable channels.
"The channel will continue to package and version its products to suit
specific markets. This can be in the form of voice-overs, localised
subtitling and local interstitial," said Mr Platt.
The channel's global proposition with a network of media assets offer
clients an integrated communications solution, as Ms Armstrong noted it
was unusual now for clients to just buy the spots, as advertisers demand
more innovative strategy.
Launched two years ago, Ms Armstrong said NatGeo had been taking full
initiative to promote the dynamic, fast paced, adventure, aspiration and
entertaining aspects of the network, which is not just a documentary
station.
NatGeo will increase its science programming, which is popular among
advertisers, as well as blockbuster event such as the three-hour
Saturday Unlimited show in a bid to enhance the entertainment aspects of
the network.
