Domino's Ready to Fall with Interactive Advertising
By Mary Reinholz
Is cable's long-awaited interactive advertising plan taking the next step?
Well, an advertising executive at J.Walter Thompson USA last week said that the Detroit agency has cobbled an interactive deal to deliver commercials over cable with Domino's Pizza.
"We can confirm an interactive deal with Domino's," said Michael McDonald, the agency's management director of diversified accounts who is in charge of the Domino's account. He noted that while some paperwork needs to be completed, "This is something we're going to proceed with."
The deal is "unfolding as we speak. It involves a lot of things," he said."Our interest is in terms of being able to deliver commercials over cable and broadcast networks to individual households in local markets. This is another way to supplement our buys for Domino's Pizza."
TCI, now AT&T Broadband and Internet Services, has kept mum on the progress of its interactive advertising plans announced early in 1998. That deal, announced with Kraft, Grey Advertising and TCI Media Services was hailed by the participants as landmark multi-million dollar deal offering geo-demographic messages that eventually could be targeted on a house-to-house basis. MediaOne had planned an interactive advertising test in 1998, but then postponed the effort.
Alec Gerster, chairman of MediaCom, a division of Grey Advertising that helped put together the deal, said his agency has been using TCI's local market avails to test applications on TCI systems. "When we hooked up with TCI, it was before the AT&T deal and it's getting more interesting all the time," he said." It's a small scale testing of applications that TCI will come up with. The idea is to take advantage of high-end digital set-top boxes."
McDonald said that AT&T's acquisition of TCI "obviously presents us with signficant opportunities as well." He would not disclose a price tag for the campaign, but said that in terms of how the money would be spent, "It's a traditional advertising and media relationship that also allows for exploration" over a two-year period."
Alan White, director of interactive strategies at J. Walter Thompson, said his unit had been talking to TCI since the fall, noting, "TCI has been trying to grab a piece of the digital world for the future. They've been rolling out set-top boxes since the end of last year."
TCI executives couldn't be reached for comment and a company spokeswoman wouldn't comment, other than to say interactive advertising is "a platform that's been of great interest. We expect to announce some ground breaking deals shortly."
|
