With its latest promotional push, WE TV hopes to make commuters swoon for the latest season of its original series Bridezillas.
The women's-targeted service has festooned the upper-level Metro-North Commuter Railroad train bays at Manhattan commuter hub Grand Central Terminal with more than 300 posters. The Grand Central gambit is part of a seven-figure multimedia push behind the fourth season of the network's highest-rated series and the debut of its new Sunday -night “We Go Bridal” programming block (see Spotlight, page 20), as well as its information-laden Web site, Wegobridal.com
Extending into mid-July, the month-long effort also encompasses wrapping Bridezillas images around trash receptacles in the beaux-arts building. This marks the first time that GCT has allowed an advertiser to engage in such an all-encompassing initiative, according to WE senior vice president of marketing Kenetta Bailey.
One ad reads, “They're madder, They're badder, They're back,” and another features this couplet-driven copy: “The florist is crazy, The caterer's lazy, The dressmaker should hide … We're Brides! We're Brides! You'll do what we decide.”
“The idea was to drive tune-in to a known quantity and also make people aware of 'We Go Bridal' block,” she said, noting that about 40% of the posters convey that the show is part of the Sunday-night block, which also includes Platinum Weddings, which debuted June 17.
She said that WE retained the creative services of New York agency Yard, which “immediately got the sensibility we were looking for: That even though it's the show's fourth season, you haven't seen nearly all of the craziness happen yet.”
Elsewhere, WE placed four garments from wedding dress designer Tomasina in street-level glass cases, three in New York outside ad agencies and one on Chicago's Michigan Avenue. That thoroughfare was also home to a mobile wedding procession on June 11, while New York's Times Square hosted a third annual Bridezillas stunt: a cake-eating contest in which the winner earned $50,000. In addition to local TV affiliate coverage, the events were featured on Fox News Channel's Fox and Friends, ESPN, Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.
“We want to get consumers engaged in the show and create water-cooler chatter about Bridezillas and 'We Go Bridal,'” said Bailey.
These efforts supplemented a more-traditional media schedule featuring print ads in People, In Touch, Soap Opera Digest and TV Guide, among other titles. Promos are running on Dish Network and DirecTV, local broadcast, and on national and local cable. Also in play: spot radio in 15 markets; flash and rich media units on Yahoo, AOL, iVillage and MarthaStewart.com; blogs such as PerezHilton.com; and billboards in five major cities.
In addition, Bailey said WE has partnered with Condé Nast's Modern Bride magazine. Editor-in-chief Antonia van der Meer has filmed three “Have More Fun with Your Wedding” vignettes that are airing on WE, Wegobridal.com and the publisher's Brides.com site.
The network's ad sales team also sold a first-time package to diet supplement brand NV across all 18 episodes of Bridezillas this season. The deal, which also includes custom vignettes, tagged tune-in spots, on-air billboards, online banners and placement in WE TV on demand, features product integration in four installments of the show.
Bailey explained that NV employed two trainers that helped brides to be lose a significant amount of weight.
