The Case Of the Roving Ad Booster

Cable World, Sept 29, 2003

Byline: ANDREA FIGLER

Frank Lee Forensics, Sleepy the Bear and Fast Eddie Hall. The names may sound like something right out of a dime store comic book, but the characters can be found in the flesh - that is, if you happen upon Court TV's local promotion tour.

The tour, known as the Mobile Investigation Unit, is a forensics lab that has traveled the country the past two years spreading the gospel of forensics, Court TV and cable television.

And spread it has. This year alone, the tour has generated 87 print press clips and 32 television broadcast spots in the 23 cities it has visited. Last year, it generated 35 print clips and 25 TV spots while touring 20 cities.

More importantly, the forensics unit helped generate $1.2 million in local ad sales revenue for cable operators this year, 500% more than it did during its first run in 2002. So there's got to be something to this cast of characters and their traveling promotion.

As Cable World's local ad sales reporter, I knew I should investigate, so I tagged along to three different Court TV events this summer, in as many cities. (By the way, here's the scoop on the characters: Frank Lee Forensics dons a white lab coat and wears thick black-frame glasses, a real nerd type created by Court TV's marketing department. The bear is the mascot for Travelodge, one of the sponsors for Court TV's traveling tour. Fast Eddie Hall is actually the nickname of the marketing and promotions specialist at Time Warner Cable's advertising arm in Kansas City.)

One reason why the tour has done so well is that it almost serves as a bridge between reality and fantasy, one that many Americans want to cross, at least in the cities I observed. Its characters are fictional-yet-realistic, making the everyday event extraordinary.

On Aug. 16, a very hot summer morning, the Mobile Investigation Unit rolled into Kansas City for one of its last stops on this year's tour to promote the grand opening of a store called the Nebraska Furniture Mart. The Nebraska Furniture Mart? What's it doing in Kansas? More importantly, what in hell does a forensics lab have to do with furniture?

I wondered the same thing myself - for days - until we reached the store. That's when I saw the light.

Actually it was Dave, the tour's truck driver, who put it into perspective for me. "This store is bigger than malls in Hot Springs, Ark.," Dave said upon seeing the behemoth mart. Since Dave is from Hot Springs, I'll consider him a reliable source on this particular matter. Besides, you have to love the perspective of a man who smokes incessantly and wears sarcastic slogans on his jersey such as "I used to care but now I take a pill for that."

The Nebraska Furniture Mart claimed 712,000 square feet - or about seven city blocks. One store takes up the equivalent of 12 football fields. It's a Best Buy, a Circuit City, a Wal-Mart and a Home Depot all rolled into one. The Nebraska Furniture Mart is so big that it lists Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest men in the country, as its owner.

So it's a good thing that Fast Eddie Hall and his cohort Kevin Harris, senior media consultant for Time Warner Cable's advertising sales, landed the new store as an advertising client. In fact, another company was already interested in local sponsorship of the traveling forensics lab. But when Harris realized the promotional opportunity that Court TV's event could provide Nebraska Furniture Mart, he pitched Court TV's Mobile Investigation Unit to it exclusively. "These types of programs help people get comfortable with an outside company coming into a marketplace," Harris said.

After all, Nebraska Furniture Mart is headquartered in Nebraska, not Kansas. So it needed an introduction.

"For us as a brand-new store, it's all about getting people out here," said Jeff Lind, the store's director, that humid Saturday morning. That's why the company launched an all-out advertising blitz - on radio, broadcast, cable and print. You name it, they did it.

While Lind would not disclose the amount of the store's ad budget, he said cable and the promotion offered by Court TV's mobile unit was key. It helped the store target a key demographic, young families. Specifically, the types of folks interested in Court TV's forensics lab also might buy electronic goods such as CDs, DVDs and high-definition televisions - products that new consumers don't typically associate with a store that has the word furniture in its name.

"This kind of stuff is exciting value-added for us," Lind said.

At breakfast before the store opened its doors at 10 a.m., Time Warner Cable's Harris and Hall explained to me that they had pitched several sponsorship events to the Nebraska Furniture Mart. In the beginning, the store's marketing executives held their cards close to the vest.

First, the Nebraska Furniture Mart wanted a NASCAR event because the new Kansas City store was directly across from a racetrack. But since there was no race during the grand opening, the store had to look elsewhere. They decided against another event on breast cancer, presented by Lifetime, because they already were doing a breast cancer event on behalf of a local hospital.