Vince Manze's must see TV is NBC after TV.

TV executives around the world are familiar with NBC's "Must-See TV" promotional campaign, but few are familiar with the man behind the slogan. Actually, the way Vince Manze, senior vp of Advertising and Promotion at NBC Entertainment, describes it, the team behind this fortunate long-running catch phrase includes not only himself and John Miller, NBC's executive vp of Advertising and Promotion and Event Programming, but some 200 others who work in their division on the East and West Coasts.

Miller and Manze's team occupies several floors of the NBC studios in Burbank. Like the other U.S. TV networks, NBC takes promotion very seriously and allocates a top-secret budget for the department, estimated by insiders to run in the neighborhood of $50 million-plus per year. This figure doesn't include the air time inventory, which in NBC's case is estimated at $700 million in resale value per year. (However, it has been pointed out that this is a mythical figure, since if NBC were to sell, it would dilute the market.)

"We run like an advertising agency," Manze explained in an exclusive interview. "I'm the creative director, while John, my partner of 10 years, is the financial director." All the work, including editing and special effects, is done on the premises, with the technical effects performed in what is called the "Magic Room."

Manze continued: "There are two basic elements behind our on-air promotion. First, the marketing goal: who, what, where, how. In other words, we need to have clear marketing objectives, and to do so we must deal closely with the scheduling and programming people. Second, we have to execute the objectives in the most creative way. The difference between European and American promotion is that in Europe creativity is bigger, but then they loose the marketing goals."

Manze, who has often made presentations before the promotion association Promax (he spoke most recently at Promax Europe in Rome), is now an inspiration to several overseas TV networks. At the time of Video Ages visit to his office, Mediaset had sent Cinzia Squadrone from Italy to do an internship with Manze. Indeed, the "maestro" mohiker is appropriate for this 48-year-old Philadelphia-born promotion wizard. In 1995, he received the "Marketing Maverick" award, and he shared with Miller the "Marketing Team of the Year" award presented by Promax. Before moving to NBC 4 in Burbank and then to the NBC Network in 1990, Manze worked for CBS and later for ABC as the local stations' promotion executive. He has also served as the creator and executive producer of several NBC specials, including the All-Star Comedy Hour and TV's Funniest Families.

Comedy also happens to be Manze's personal talent, which he likes to unleash at presentations and, when he can, at comedy clubs. But while Manze's philosophy is that promotion is fun, his approach is serious and professional when it comes to both entertainment and sports. The network generates some $3 billion in annual sales and, in the words of Manze, "65 percent of our money is on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday" - days that cannot be lost to the competition.

And what about the competition? Networks might program against each other, but do they promote against each other as well? "I cannot promote on the competition's promotion. We compete only for our own audience," said Manze.

In order to accomplish his goals, Manze utilizes spots of 10, 20, 30 and 60 seconds, at times cramming promotion for multiple shows into longer spots. NBC's promotion inventory consists of an allotted number of minutes per year. Spots are rotated to gauge the impression, effectiveness and gross rating points (GRP, a figure that indicates the cumulative ratings earned by all spots). These figures are estimates, since networks zealously guard their information - an attitude that has more to do with the nature of the TV business than with any real industrial espionage, since executives tend to rotate among the networks. For instance, Alan Cohen, the executive behind ABC's wisecracking yellow ads, once served as a top promotion executive at NBC. Cohen is credited with creating such ABC maxims as "Before TV, two World Wars. After TV, zero." and "Hello? It's free.", all rendered against a bright yellow background.

Manze conceded that Cohen's promotion is clever, but he asked: "Has it brought more viewers?" The answer, judging by ABC'S ratings, is an obvious "no." Nevertheless, 26 percent of people polled said that they liked ABC's campaign, which was especially popular among 18-to-24-year-olds, a group that ABC is now targeting.

NBC'S approach to promotion was reemphasized when Miller joined Manze in a joint presentation given in July at the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, California. The duo claimed that the key to promotion is establishing the network as "smart, quality, fun." Miller said, "We try to have the promotion reflect those three words." Manze added: "We all focus on an objective. Who's our audience? What do we want to do with it? How do we get some attention? We map out our marketing plan first - our marketing objective - and then we have fun. Who do we want to reach and how do we reach it?" As for the creation of the spots themselves, both said that it is easier to create spots for new shows than for established shows. Stars who appear in. spots are not paid extra, but Manze said that they "get the rewards in syndication."

Miller went on to describe the evolution of the "Must See TV" slogan: "We said, 'Okay, this our night of appointment television.' We said, 'We need to come up with the name for this "appointment television."' Someone said, 'How about "Must See TV"?' That was about it. No extensive focus groups, no big research." With a catchy rhyme in place, the slogan got the go-ahead, and it now has 80 percent awareness. It is now used not only in TV promotion but in outdoor, print, radio and cable promotion.

Of ABC's competing "TV is Good" promotion, Miller said: "It's tough to get noticed. It's tough to get talked about, and they got talked about. So, in that way, our hat's off to them." But, Miller added, "It's sort of tough to promote the network without promoting the shows, and I think they maybe suffered by it.... They've learned. Now they're using the yellow campaign to promote the shows."

On the issue of reruns, Miller said that although ideally he would like to have 52 episodes of Frasier each year, "it's not going to happen." Looking to get viewers to tune in to old shows, the duo unveiled a campaign called "It's New to You." Two of the spots for "It's New to You" promoted the concept, while a third employed a "Gilbert and Sullivan takeoff" of the lineup. Miller said that the slogan worked: "The rerun episodes are new to 70 percent of the viewers tuning in." The spots for Suddenly Susan reflected a particular challenge. Miller said, "When Melrose Place went off the air, we said, 'Gee, there's got to be a way of attracting the Melrose Place audience. So we crafted a spot that was sort of in their language, a spot that was familiar to the Melrose viewer."

Miller and Manze also discussed cross-promoting with other corporations. Revlon, for example, gets air time in exchange for print vehicles.

Neither seemed too concerned about NBC's loss of football. Miller said that Sunday afternoon football "has a 10 to 20 percent swing, and that's if you have shows that have male appeal." He continued: "When we had female movies, we didn't notice any difference. So, for CBS, which has largely female movies, it may help them a little bit on 60 Minutes, but it's going to be tough beyond that."