I stepped into the Marketing Director role in October 2022 on an interim basis, right as we were ramping up our KGW+ streaming app. The early metrics for KGW+ were excellent, and we were encouraged to make a bigger marketing push.

We initially followed the corporate playbook, and it had been successful. But the messaging was a little too “all things to all people” and lacked a clear benefit. KGW+ seemed to generate a couple of questions from viewers: what does it do, and where is it? Complicating these questions, KGW has a very similar streaming product through the web and mobile app, but it’s not KGW+ and has fewer benefits.

Producer Randy Cobb and I offered simple answers to each pain point through a series of :15 spots in heavy rotation. Each driving home a single benefit of KGW+, nothing more. We depicted the app in a wall-mounted television to efficiently communicate where to find it. We ran the campaign intensively during the holiday season—as people were receiving set-top boxes as gifts.

The results were stunning—a 600% jump in downloads in just the first month, with one of the highest download rates in the company.