TVB'02 Is Now History TVB President Chris Rohrs opened the conference. TVB's 2002 Annual Marketing Conference, partnered for the first time with the New York International Auto Show, was a home run. That opinion was universal among attendees, exhibitors, and the independent press. Said the March 27 Broadcasting & Cable Daily Fax: "This year's Television Bureau of Advertising conference in New York can officially be classified a rip-roaring success." The conference was sold out ten days before convening in New York's Jacob Javits Center. It featured such industry giants as Viacom's Mel Karmazin and MindShare's Irwin Gotlieb who in a one-on-one discussion agreed that television would do better this year relative to other media, Gotlieb saying that TV is still the first priority for agency buyers and that he was "cautiously optimistic" that TV ad spending had turned the corner. Similarly, Tom Wolzien, senior media analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein, predicted that total ad spending would rise 1% in 2002 (click here for the Wolzien PowerPoint). Michael Browner, executive director/media and marketing operations for General Motors, said GM's Local Marketing Groups were here to stay and that broadcasters should not hope for the "return of the good old days" of the dealer-controlled Dealer Marketing Groups. Jim May, EVP/government relations at the National Association of Broadcasters, talked about 2002 political dollars and the NAB's growing concern about states' attempts to raise revenues through taxes on advertising (click here for May PowerPoint). Peter Brown and Jim Henry of Automotive News moderated a wide-ranging discussion of automotive marketing issues with H. Carter Myers III, chairman of the National Automotive Dealers Association; Scott Keogh, general manager/corporate communications, Mercedes Benz USA; Steve Sturm, VP-marketing, Toyota; and Steve Wilhite, VP-marketing, Nissan North America. The conference also included breakout sessions. Featured were a Car Dealers Forum, coLearn Sales Training workshop, a discussion of the Local Ratings Landscape (click here for presentation of George Ivie, Media Rating Council president), an EDI Roundtable, and a session on Selling Against Cable. The following week's Broadcasting & Cable devoted its lead editorial to the success of the re-invented TVB conference. Here below is the text in its entirety: From the beginning, we thought TVB had a great idea: a convention of TV-station executives in New York in the same building as the New York Auto Show. Here was an opportunity for broadcasters to meet old friends, compare notes and rub hubcaps with their principal advertisers. After all, they're in the same business: sales and service. Well, we were right. It was a great idea. Last Tuesday, more than 500 broadcasters (and 200 ad execs and vendors) met at the Javits Center for the TVB Marketing Conference as the cars were rolled into the exhibition halls. It will probably stand as the year's largest gathering of TV-station managers, with NATPE having lost its way and the NAB convention becoming more and more a techie affair. (The NAB seems to have given up all pretense of running a broadcasters' convention. It now bills the gathering as "The World's Electronic Media Show," whatever that means.) The TVB conference worked because TVB President Chris Rohrs made sure everybody had plenty of reasons to be there, though all that auto money should have been enough. He persuaded seven station groups and the NBC affiliate board to meet in connection with the conference. And he put together a first-rate program. The conference gave a psychological lift to the broadcasters who attended. Although nobody promised a swift end to the advertising drought, all agreed that business is getting better, that the rebound has begun. More important, the conference got broadcasters together in numbers large enough to remind them they are still a force to be reckoned with. -Broadcasting & Cable (lead editorial) April 1, 2002 Click here to view galleries of conference photos.

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