By Bob Meyer

In a past post I pointed out how brilliant a trader Steven Spielberg, the renowned movie producer, is. Here’s another indication of his thinking, and how his tactics have moved him to the status of billionaire.

A couple of years ago, a company he co-founded, DreamWorks Television, aired its first hour-long promotion in 85 percent of the country in time slots generally unavailable to informercial marketers. And his company did it without paying a dime for media.

The program, “The Greatest Moments of the Olympiad,” was composed of vignettes from director and Olympics chronicler Bud Greenspan. It offered Olympic memorabilia, such as posters and a book, and a video series on the history of the games as seen through the eyes of Greenspan. The package sold for $159.80 with a four-pay offer.

DreamWorks swung a month-long roll-out without paying cash for time by working with local stations who were offered 10 of the 14 advertising minutes within the hour program. DreamWorks used the remaining four minutes to sell its products. In future efforts DreamWorks will have the flexibility to sell its own advertising as well.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 10:01 am and is filed under Best & Brightest Barter, Media & Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.