Dish Network taps comedian for ads
By Jeff Smith, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published February 2, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
Photo by Getty Images / 2006
Comedian Frank Caliendo performs at The Comedy Festival in Las Vegas.
Dish Network has launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign featuring comedian Frank Caliendo hawking the company while also impersonating President Bush, Al Pacino, John Madden and others.
Jessica Insalaco, chief marketing officer for the country's second-largest satellite-TV services provider, said that Caliendo offers a fun way to tell customers about the benefits of Dish and its digital video recorder services.
"I think what people most remember are advertisements that are funny," Insalaco said.
She said the Douglas County- based company wanted to feature a known talent. Caliendo, a former Mad TV cast member and most recently with Frank TV on TBS, has been a satisfied Dish customer for years and "really liked our plan."
The campaign, which started Friday and is running on TV, radio, the Internet and in print, represents a significant spending increase, Insalaco said, while declining to disclose exact figures.
Dish is unusual for a large company because it creates its own advertising, rather than hiring an outside agency. Insalaco said Dish even wrote the ad copy because Caliendo wanted to honor the writer's strike in Hollywood.
Kenneth Manning, associate professor of marketing at Colorado State University, said that humor can be an effective way to get people's attention, set a positive mood about the product and build a favorable attitude about the company in general.
"If you can make somebody laugh, then some of the positive feelings can rub off on the brand," Manning said.
But humor also can distract from the message the company is trying to make, he said. Manning, who viewed a John Madden spot, said he thought Dish did a good job of integrating humor with the instant-replay benefits of a Dish DVR.
Dish didn't buy a spot in Sunday's Super Bowl because of the expense.
The ads come on the heels of Dish's announcement of a price freeze for programming packages that include a DVR. Packages without a DVR are increasing in price.
The ads promote Dish's DVR as being better than TiVo. That's based on a favorable CNET review last fall of Dish's high-definition DVR.
The ad campaign, coincidentally, was launched a day after an appellate court upheld a verdict that Dish had infringed on TiVo's software patent. Dish said it has downloaded new software to its customers.
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