Cable Co. Adds Incentive Tier For Top Corp. Clients

Underscoring the appeal of travel as a performance motivation tool, the southeast division of Continental Cablevision Inc. added a second tier to its incentive program last fall that has landed several new clients for the Jacksonville, Fla.-based television advertising, sales and production company.

The program, dubbed Le French Connection and created by Atlanta-based USMotivation, offered a trip to France to clients that signed on from August to December last year with airtime budgets of $40,000 to $100,000, and a trip to Montreal for those that spent $15,000 to $50,000.

"We were able to compete in certain marketplaces where we may not have been seen as a player," said CCI vice president Michael Anapolsky.

CCI has five systems in its Southeast region that include Hialeah, Ft. Meyers and Jacksonville, all of which had the opportunity to participate. Continental Cable, the nation's third-largest broadband telecommunications operator, passes over 7.2 million homes and serves 4.2 million subscribers in 20 states, as well as in cities in Argentina, Australia and Singapore.

The southeast U.S. division, one of the company's best performers, wanted a program that could help it achieve ambitious sales goals, said Josh Brown, director of national accounts for USMotivation. "Although I don't have hard numbers in, I know that CCI achieved their goals and that the program went over very well," he said.

Bringing in a second tier to acknowledge different degrees of achievement is always advisable, Brown said. Le French Connection, which ran six previous times with trips to France only, has traditionally increased business for the cable operator by at least 35 percent, he said.

But tier two was intended to boost sales by at least 50 percent, Anapolsky said. The program attracted several smaller clients, which account for about one-third of CCI's business.

CCI supported its two-tiered approach with a media kit outlining overall objectives and touting possible rewards with spending goal guidelines. CCI's account executives-who tried for some of the slots-made appointments with their customers to present packages and get ad budget commitments.

The idea, Anapolsky said, was to build relationships in an industry notorious for stiff, price-only driven competition. The companies that tend to consider cable advertising also are enticed by billboard companies, specialty advertising companies, newspapers and radio.

Implemented by several of the incentive house's clients with similar results, the program as used by CCI offered about 50 grand-prize winners an all-expenses-paid trip to the Loire Valley, including a dinner cruise around Paris and a hot-air balloon ride above Versailles.

The deluxe trip is not simply dangling short-term rewards in front of perspective clients, Brown said. "It really is the first step in establishing relationships, he said. "If you spend time in an exciting destination-a hard-to-duplicate program in a place where clients could not easily afford to go-with host-company representatives, a whole different level of business partnering typically results.