ViacomCBS marked the start of Super Bowl LV on CBS with a marketing blitz that ran across its newly combined brand portfolio. 

The company began to woo audiences yesterday with a cross-platform campaign announcing that CBS will air Super Bowl LV on Feb. 7, 2021. On-air promos appeared on more than two dozen ViacomCBS networks, including MTV, Comedy Central, CBS, and Pop TV, as well as on Pluto TV, the company’s ad-supported streaming platform. Social accounts tied to ViacomCBS brands and television shows also shared the announcement. In the coming months, cross-portfolio marketing campaigns similar to the Super Bowl effort will support ViacomCBS programming tentpoles such as live award shows, Paramount Pictures movie releases, TV series premieres, and sports programming and games. 

“The combined ViacomCBS presents enormous opportunities to expand the audience for so many programs,” says ViacomCBS Senior Vice President of Marketing Bradley Archer-Haynes. “By combining the reach and scale of CBS with the deep-rooted connections that brands such as MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, BET, and CMT have established with their young and diverse audiences, we can tap a powerful internal network effect.”

A campaign for The Grammy Awards®, which aired on CBS on Jan 26, was the first evidence of the potential marketing power of ViacomCBS’ newly combined brand portfolio, which has 22% of the U.S. TV audience, the largest share among its media competitors. The company’s coordinated, multi-platform Grammys campaign to drive awareness generated more than 40M cable promo impressions and 80M social impressions in the days leading up to the show. 

Programming was also coordinated. The Gayle King Grammy Special aired on CBS during primetime on Thursday, Jan. 23—following teaser segments that aired during the week on CBS This Morning—and on MTV and BET in the days following. MTV and BET also aired MTV Presents: A 2020 Grammy Celebration, an hour-long Grammy Awards nomination special. 

“The Grammys were the perfect starting point for cross-portfolio marketing because there are so many customer touchpoints across Viacom brands, MTV and VH1 especially, that made sense for a big collaboration,” says Mike Benson, president and CMO of CBS.

Each brand had creative autonomy to create digital and social content tailored to the interests of their audiences. For example, MTV aired original Grammy-themed videos on YouTube and Comedy Central digital creator Jordan Mendoza posted video from the Grammys red carpet to the brand’s TikTok channel; Pluto TV aired music video playlists on its YO! MTV and MTV Biggest Pop channels; CMT and Paramount Network celebrated the country music nominees on social media; and BET shot long-form on-the-ground videos hosted by Boomerang’s Lala Milan. 

“Running promos across media networks is important,” says Benson, “but really good marketing works well when you’ve got creative, interesting ways to engage people that may not necessarily look like marketing.”