Welcome to the Neighborhood: ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment and ABC Team Up to Promote The Neighbors in Innovative Social-Media Effort

Welcome to the Neighborhood: ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment and ABC Team Up to Promote The Neighbors in Innovative Social-Media Effort

Group's national marketers use members' proprietary social channels to drive viewership to premiere of network's sitcom

NEW YORK, Sept. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- In an industry first, the Association of National Advertisers' Alliance for Family Entertainment is teaming up with ABC in a unique social media effort to encourage families to tune in to the premiere of the network's new sitcom The Neighbors, on September 26 at 9:30 p.m. (ET).

Many ANA Alliance members are creating tune-in messages reflecting their brands, then directing consumers to one of ABC's digital assets via their proprietary social media channels to promote the new show. The effort is the latest in the influential advertiser group's ongoing multi-platform effort to find, develop, and support family programming. It follows last May's attention-grabbing ad campaign in which more than 20 ANA Alliance members encouraged broadcast network executives to consider more family shows in their 2012-13 schedules.

The Neighbors is a half-hour comedy, featuringa family -- Marty Weaver (Lenny Venito), his wife Debbie (Jami Gertz), and their three kids -- who leave New York for a new home in the gated New Jersey townhome community of Hidden Hills. The Weavers soon discover that their neighbors are all aliens. And they learn that, as it turns out, the pressures of parenthood and marriage are not exclusive to planet Earth.

"ABC is including more family programming in its 2012-2013 primetime schedule," explains Gail Tifford, ANA Alliance co-chair and senior director of media at Unilever, North America, one of the marketers involved in The Neighbors promotion. "This effort exemplifies one of the ways the Alliance is committed to supporting family programming choices for consumers."

"Viewers tell us they want more family shows and their options are few and far between," adds Ben Simon, co-chair of the ANA Alliance and director at Walmart, which is also participating in the promotion. "To ensure parents know of ABC's new family show, we have combined our resources to help generate awareness on Walmart's social media channels before it launches. This program is good for consumers and good for family brands."

The social media effort is the first emerging platform element in the ANA Alliance's ongoing effort to support storytelling that reflects the diversity of modern American families and the complex issues they face. Since its inception more than a decade ago, the group has helped bring to air more than 20 primetime hits. It also helps find, develop, and support new family content opportunities in traditional and online media, and runs the nation's only contest for new screenwriters, in partnership with leading content creators such as West Wing creator John Wells.

"The ANA Alliance understands how important it is to support quality television without compromising the integrity of the storytelling," says Paul Lee, president of the ABC Entertainment Group. "We are excited they are supportive of our family programming platform and specifically helping us promote The Neighbors."

About the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment

Founded in 1910, the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) leads the marketing community by providing its members with insights, collaboration, and advocacy. The ANA includes over 470 companies with 10,000 brands that collectively spend over $250 billion in marketing communications and advertising. The ANA strives to communicate marketing best practices, lead industry initiatives, influence industry practices, manage industry affairs, and advance, promote, and protect all advertisers and marketers.

The Alliance for Family Entertainment is a group of nearly 40 national advertisers, supported by the ANA, representing 37% of all U.S. television advertising dollars. Its mission is to find, nurture, develop, and support high-quality content the entire family can enjoy on multiple distribution platforms.

Patty Kerr
for
ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment
310.344.4487
pkerr@spkllc.com

SOURCE ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment

ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment


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