By some estimates, Irene became the most disruptive news event for advertising plans since Sept. 11, 2001. Tens of millions of dollars of commercials and print advertisements were canceled or postponed to accommodate the decisions by television, radio and newspaper executives to devote sustained coverage to the storm.
For instance, in New York City, television news programming was continuous on stations owned by the national networks. They pre-empted regular network and local programming for more than 36 hours.
“We weren’t paying attention to the revenue stream during the height of the storm,” said Peter Dunn, president and general manager of WCBS-TV, Channel 2. “We did run a couple of breaks, but it was very, very little compared with what we normally run.”
“When you’re in the heat of it, you want to make sure to get the best coverage to viewers,” said Mr. Dunn, who is also president of the CBS Television Stations division of the CBS Corporation. “Then you think about making advertisers whole.”
His counterpart at another channel agreed.
“This is the Super Bowl for a news operation,” said Michael Jack, president and general manager at WNBC-TV, Channel 4, part of the NBCUniversal unit of Comcast.
“While nobody relishes it,” he said, “everybody inside 30 Rock understands that in a weather emergency we will roll with weather programming that’s important and appropriate.”
The “vast majority” of Channel 4’s coverage ran without commercials, Mr. Jack said, except for breaks “during an anchor switch or if we didn’t have video cued up” to run.
“Most advertisers are very cooperative and understanding,” he added. “They get that we need to get information to viewers.”
Some marketers seek out special news programming like storm coverage as sponsorship opportunities. They ask Channel 4 or other news media to run their ads if and when pitches are being carried.
Those advertisers recognize that “more people are watching television” at such times, Mr. Jack said — assuming the power remains on. Among them are insurers like Allstate, Farmers, Geico and Travelers along with retailers like Walgreens.
For example, Walgreens ran commercials on New York radio stations urging consumers to shop there for storm supplies like batteries.
On radio, Geico, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, has “a special rotation” of commercials for before and after major weather events, said Dean Jarrett, a spokesman for the Martin Agency in Richmond, Va., a unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies that is the longtime creative agency for Geico.
The first phase, before a storm, is composed of spots that advise, “Don’t forget to prepare,” Mr. Jarrett said, and “the second phase says, ‘We hope you’re safe and if you have any issue, give us a call’ ” to make a claim.
Geico was also among the advertisers that sponsored the occasional commercial breaks during coverage of Irene on the Weather Channel. Others included Farmers and Bayer aspirin.
There is an equivalent of those buys in the new media, in the form of ads supplied in real time to google.com and other Web sites on subjects that are suddenly relevant to computer users.
On Monday, for instance, the Huffington Post Web site carried a display ad from Allstate with a photograph of a damaged home and the headline “When it happens you’re in good hands.”
Those who clicked on the ad were led to a section of allstate.com devoted to “catastrophe preparation and claim information.”
Online, newspapers had no problem exposing ads to readers — again, assuming they had power. Print versions were another matter, particularly the Sunday editions, typically the largest and most lucrative of the week.
The Daily News in New York included in its prestorm Saturday edition all sections and inserts that were to have appeared in its Sunday edition, including the comics, two Valassis coupon supplements and circulars from retailers like Modell’s, Radio Shack and P. C. Richard Son.
The front page of the Saturday edition declared, “Extra: Special Hurricane Edition.”
Readers able to find the Sunday edition on Sunday — when most newsstands were closed — saw an editor’s note on Page 2 informing them of the switch and asking those who wanted the sections mailed to them to call a toll-free number.
For The New York Times, home deliveries of the Sunday edition “ran the gamut depending where people were,” said a spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy. About 24,000 copies came late, she added, and 253,000 were delivered on Monday.
In many areas, the number of single copies printed for sale was “greatly reduced” in expectation of closed stores or limited distribution, Ms. Murphy said.
Among other dislocations, thousands of retail stores — locally owned or outlets of national chains — were closed, losing a day or two of sales during an important time on the retail calendar, the back-to-school shopping season.
Some stores in Manhattan, among them the Bloomingdale’s flagship on the Upper East Side and a Gymboree on the Upper West Side, were even boarded up.
The storm created incongruous retail situations. The doorway of a store on Broadway and 73rd Street that sells apparel bore a sign that read, “This store will be closed Saturday and Sunday due to Hurricane Irene.”
The store, as it turned out, is devoted to the North Face, billed on a section of the Web site of its parent, the VF Corporation, as “the ultimate, authentic outdoor brand.”
Such concerns did not bother a nearby purveyor of less rugged clothing. The Town Shop, a lingerie store, had this sign in its windows on Sunday: “Despite the massive storm … we are open today! We have no ‘D’ batteries … but plenty of ‘D’ cup bras!”
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9268a74a0197df3ba0f6f22a49e1731c
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.