CTAM Celebrates the Best of the Best in Cable Marketing HBO Nabs Mark Awards
Top Honors for “Hacking Reality” and “Imagine”
(New Orleans, LA – October 18, 2010) The Cable &
Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) celebrated the 2010 Mark
Award winners tonight at The Summit in New Orleans. The Mark Awards recognize
excellence in cable and content marketing, and this year CTAM members chose a
total of 202 winners – 61 gold, 82 silver and 59 bronze.
Among all content providers, Showtime Networks, Inc. received
the most awards, winning a total of 33 Mark Awards. HBO followed with 31.
Notably, National Geographic Channel won the most awards for a single, basic
cable network with 17—besting their own record of 16 set in 2009.
Cox Communications won the most Mark Awards among cable
companies with 15, followed by Comcast with seven.
CTAM President and CEO Char Beales presented HBO with the “Top
of the Mark Award” for its “Hacking Reality Campaign.” This marketing blitzkrieg
“hacked reality,” blurred the lines between fiction and real life, and generated
buzz for the True Blood series and the brand. The media tactics ranged from faux
blogs to advertorials featuring fanged celebrities, and culminated at Comic Con
with the debut of the official True Blood beverage: blood orange soda. The
result was a 62 percent increase in viewership from season one to season two.
In addition, Beales handed out CTAM’s inaugural “Most
Innovative” award to HBO for its marketing of Imagine. This integrated,
multiplatform campaign themed “It’s more than you imagined” was a stellar
approach to building brand identity and audience engagement. The effort drove
hundreds of thousands of unique visitors to the campaign website with 70 percent
recommending it to friends.
Teams of experienced marketing and agency executives chose the
winners over four days of judging in Washington, D.C. and New York City. More
information is available at
www.markawards.com.
The Mark Awards competition sponsors are HBO, Showtime
Networks, Inc. and Teradata. Multichannel News is the media partner.
The 2010 Mark Awards Committee chair is Sharon Allen, vice
president, marketing and advertising, Showtime Networks, Inc. and vice-chair is
Jamia Bigalow, vice president, affiliate marketing, FOX Cable Networks.
For media inquiries, contact:
Jason D. King, ABC
Director, Communications & Media Relations
CTAM
(703) 837.6541
jason@ctam.com
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