NBC Universal says John Miller, the former chief marketing officer for its television group, is coming out of semi-retirement to set up the new agency, which will market all parts of the NBC Sports Group as soon as the pending acquisition of NBC Universal by Comcast is complete. Miller retired from the NBC Agency last summer. Since then, he’s been helping with the integration of Comcast and NBC. He’ll remain chairman of the NBC Universal Marketing Council, which handles promotions across the company.
The new agency will be modeled after the NBC Agency, which Miller helped to start in 1999. It will focus on marketing NBC Sports Group assets, including NBC’s existing broadcasts of sporting events and Comcast’s Golf Channel, Versus and 11 regional sports nets, also owned by Comcast. The individual units will still promote themselves, but the agency will find areas for broader collaboration between units and with advertisers. NBC Sports currently offers the Olympic Games, some of the NFL, the NHL, Notre Dame football, the PGA Tour, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the USGA Championships, Wimbledon, and the French Open and more.
NBC Sports has recently produced campaigns for partners such as the USOC, NFL and NHL, and collaborated with advertisers, including Proctor & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch, Mercedes, Target, Sears, Coors, DirecTV, and Papa John’s. “
RBR-TVBR observation: The sports agency will certainly rep a heck of a lot of combined inventory between NBCU and Comcast. The recent thumbs up from the FCC on this deal will soon show how it will affect the marketplace. This time around, it looks like ESPN will take it on the chin a bit, as cross-platform opportunities from the NBC Agency will be many.
