Male Opps: The CW Network taps new CMO as national TV spend increases significantly (Score 69)

Sales Lead: The CW Network selected Chris Spadaccini as its new CMO

• Spadaccini joined from CAMP, where he served in the same role, spearheading the company's marketing by targeting young families via various immersive themed experiences, programmed activities, and curated merchandise.
• He is also credited with playing a key role in building HBO's iconic brand.
  • Having been Warner Media Entertainment's CMO, Spadaccini reportedly marketed a portfolio of category-leading brands such as HBO, TBS, TNT, truTV, and all brand and content marketing aspects for the company's D2C streaming platform, HBO Max.
• Now, Spadaccini will oversee The CW's broadcast and digital marketing divisions.
  • He seems to be the first CMO specifically working on this brand.
• The brand will likely:
  • ​​​​​​​Ramp up its experiential and digital initiatives
  • Increase overall ad spend
  • Conduct agency reviews
• Target demographic: 
  • ​​​​​​​Millennials and Gen-X with a strong male skew

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • 2021-2022 spend: In 2022, The CW spent approximately $10.8m on national TV commercials, almost double the approximately $6.2m spent in 2021.
  • 2022 ad programming: Its 2022 commercials targeted male sports enthusiasts watching shows such as NFL Football, College Football, the 2022 Winter Olympics, the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, and NBA Basketball.
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • 2021-2022 spend: The network allocated roughly $1.3m toward digital ads last year, only around a fifth of the roughly $6.7m allocated in 2021.
  • 2022 data: The CW earned ~145.7m digital impressions last year via desktop video (36%), desktop display (28%), mobile display (16%), mobile video (15%), Instagram (3%), and Facebook (1%) ads.
    • ​​​​​​​The brand placed most of last year's desktop video ads site direct onto destinations such as YouTube (48%), imdb.com, finance.yahoo.com, yahoo.com, and sports.yahoo.com.
    • Top site destinations for last year's desktop display ads included thedailybeast.com (14%), the biglead.com, yahoo.com, thepioneerwoman.com, and cyncentral.com.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The brand utilizes radio, OOH, and Google Ads.
  • The CW holds planning conversations in Q2 and buying conversations in Q1.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: Get on Spadaccini's radar soon in case his hire leads to brand-specific agency reviews for The CW.
• Current agency roster:
  • Direct Agents​​​​​​​: AOR
  • OMD: Media agency partner

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix.