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Launch! Advertising and Promotion in Real Time, 2009a

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1.4 Let’s Meet the Potential Client<br />

LEARNING OBJECTIVE<br />

After study<strong>in</strong>g this section, students should be able to do the follow<strong>in</strong>g:<br />

1. Discuss the background <strong>and</strong> primary employees (characters) of msnbc.com, a well-known media br<strong>and</strong> <strong>in</strong><br />

search of its identity.<br />

Established <strong>in</strong> 1996 as a jo<strong>in</strong>t venture between Microsoft <strong>and</strong> the National Broadcast<strong>in</strong>g Corporation<br />

(NBC), ten years later msnbc.com f<strong>in</strong>ds itself <strong>in</strong> an <strong>in</strong>creas<strong>in</strong>gly crowded field of news providers <strong>and</strong><br />

hopes to add new users to its twenty-five million unique visitors a month. As msnbc.com’s VP of<br />

market<strong>in</strong>g, Cather<strong>in</strong>e Capta<strong>in</strong>, says, “I am particularly concerned about dist<strong>in</strong>guish<strong>in</strong>g ourselves <strong>in</strong> a<br />

market where every new site is start<strong>in</strong>g to look a lot alike.”<br />

It is important to underst<strong>and</strong> that the client is msnbc.com the Web site <strong>and</strong> not MSNBC the cable<br />

channel. Although the Web site msnbc.com <strong>and</strong> the cable channel MSNBC were launched together <strong>in</strong><br />

1996, they have always ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>ed separate corporate structures <strong>and</strong> news operations. NBC <strong>and</strong><br />

Microsoft rema<strong>in</strong> fifty-fifty partners <strong>in</strong> msnbc.com, but Microsoft has reduced its stake <strong>in</strong> the<br />

television network to 18 percent. And msnbc.com is editorially <strong>and</strong> f<strong>in</strong>ancially separate from MSN,<br />

the portal site <strong>and</strong> onl<strong>in</strong>e service operated by Microsoft, although it acts as that site’s primary news<br />

provider.<br />

In addition to orig<strong>in</strong>al content from its staff, which is based out of the newsroom <strong>in</strong> Redmond,<br />

Wash<strong>in</strong>gton, msnbc.com is the news Web site for the NBC News family. It also features content from<br />

the cable television news channel MSNBC, NBC shows such as Today, NBC Nightly News,<br />

<strong>and</strong> Datel<strong>in</strong>e NBC, <strong>and</strong> partners such as the New York <strong>Time</strong>s <strong>and</strong> the Wash<strong>in</strong>gton Post. In addition,<br />

msnbc.com made its first acquisition <strong>in</strong> late 2007 when it bought Newsv<strong>in</strong>e, a Web site with<br />

community-driven news stories <strong>and</strong> op<strong>in</strong>ions.<br />

In its history as a company, msnbc.com never pursued or launched a br<strong>and</strong><strong>in</strong>g campaign until Ms.<br />

Capta<strong>in</strong> arrived just shy of the site’s tenth anniversary. In her quest for the right agency, Ms. Capta<strong>in</strong><br />

sent RFPs “to a whole slew of potential agencies.”<br />

SS+K’s Pitch to W<strong>in</strong> the msnbc.com Account<br />

Objective: W<strong>in</strong> the msnbc.com account!<br />

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books<br />

Saylor.org<br />

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