Wall Street Journal - April 14, 2003
Danielle Reed, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

"That was our hardest story ever to do," says the show's producer, Mara Brock Akil. "How do you talk about AIDS and then be funny?" The May episode is the final in a series of four that has dealt with the disease, part of a yearlong, multimillion-dollar campaign sponsored by UPN's parent Viacom Inc. and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation to combat HIV/AIDS.

Last August, as Ms. Akil was weighing various serious topics for inclusion in upcoming shows, she received a memo from John Wentworth, Paramount Television Group's executive vice president of marketing, about the campaign. Staff members were invited to a seminar on HIV/AIDS and encouraged to ponder how the subject might be incorporated in their shows.

"That solidified the direction I wanted to go in," says Ms. Akil.

The initiative is the latest twist on those familiar public-service campaigns -- but writ large. In it, Viacom isn't only writing the topic into some of its shows, but is also donating airtime for public-service announcements valued at $120 million in 2003.

Only last week Gillette Co. and AOL Time Warner Inc.'s WB teamed up on a similar campaign in which a cancer plot line was incorporated into an episode of the teen show "Dawson's Creek."

Gillette and "Dawson's Creek" also developed a public-service announcement in which two of the series' stars -- Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams -- explain the importance of connecting with others after cancer is diagnosed. The show donated airtime to broadcast the announcement immediately following its April 9 episode and it was posted on the wb.com and gillettecancerconnect.org Web sites. A print ad featuring the two stars also is running in such magazines as People, Allure and YM.

In the case of "Girlfriends," the corporate commitment gave Kaiser access to everything from Viacom's radio stations to its outdoor advertising to its book-publishing arm, Simon & Schuster. "The multimedia company brings a lot to the table," says Frank Bulgarella, president of cause marketing consulting firm Resource One/Causes & Effects.

The deal, and a similar one between Scripps Networks' Home & Garden Television and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, constitutes one of the few areas of philanthropy still growing. In 2002, overall spending on cause marketing -- in which companies back the campaigns of nonprofits with both marketing dollars and donations -- rose 14% from a year earlier to $835 million, and are expected to rise an additional 10% this year, according to IEG, a corporate sponsorship consultant.

Viacom's MTV Network had previously worked with Kaiser on AIDS awareness.

However, the driving force for the new partnership was Mel Karmazin, the company's president and chief operating officer, who declared he wanted to launch a companywide HIV/AIDS initiative last spring at a company conference. Carl Folta, senior vice president of corporate relations, contacted Kaiser, and the campaign was launched in January.

In the HGTV/National Trust campaign, the network will produce 12 one-minute spots about historic sites around the country, from the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Conn., to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. was a pastor. The first one will run on July 4, and the spots, which will air throughout the year, will include celebrities such as Hal Holbrook and Sharon Stone.

Meanwhile, the network's "Restore America" series will feature the same historic buildings, while the network will also broadcast public-service spots focusing on the trust. Total value of the donated airtime, plus production costs: About $5 million.

Ad Notes ....

BRIEFS: Cable news outlets lost $10.8 million in ad revenue during the second week of the war, in addition to the $17.6 million they lost during the first week of coverage, according to CMR, an ad-tracking unit of Taylor Nelson Sofres. Still, other broadcast media are recovering by benefiting from a stronger marketplace. For example, during the second week of the conflict network TV took in $27.5 million more in ad dollars than it did in the year-earlier period. The six networks have bounced back from the first week of the conflict when they cumulatively lost $53.6 million in ad outlays ... Capital One Financial Corp. tapped Interpublic Group of Co.'s McCann-Erickson to handle its ad account. Billings are estimated at $200 million. Defunct Publicis' D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles previously handled the account. Media duties continue to be handled by Publicis Groupe SA's MediaVest and Halogen.

Write to Danielle Reed at danielle.reed@wsj.com

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