Road to Emmys Paved with Good Intentions - and Top Marketing Strategy

Why This MattersIn the most competitive marketplace TV has ever seen, Emmy guides overwhelmed viewers to what to watch.

The race to the Emmys has never felt more crowded or competitive. With 455 scripted television series on the air in 2016 and growing, just getting a nomination is about as mathematically unlikely as winning the lottery.

And still networks and streaming services keep playing the For Your Consideration game. Billboards blanketed Hollywood during Emmy voting season, and trade magazines' online and print pages remain full of Emmy ads. Creepy red-caped handmaids appeared outside of Los Angeles coffee shops to remind voters of The Handmaid's Tale. Netflix mounted a full-on 24,000-square-foot experience intended to woo voters, and that seemed to work as the service netted 91 nominations, including three best drama and two best comedy nods.

It's an arms race in terms of spending on programming right now. That there's a subsequent arms race on marketing and awards is inevitable. It's deafening, said Craig Erwich, Hulu senior vice president and head of content. We have to make sure that the marketing is as creative as the show is. Look at what we did for The Handmaid's Tale, the activations that we did - you have to be creative. Money alone is not going to get you results; you also have to be inspired. That's just the table stakes these days.

All of that time, money and effort brings back far more to networks, services and shows than just awards hardware.

I think there is a return on investment for brands with Emmy nominations and wins. Emmys represent brand approval, said Eric Schrier, president of original programming at FX and FX Productions, which scored 55 Emmy nominations this year for shows such as Atlanta, Fargo, Feud: Bette and Joan, Better Things and The Americans.

The Emmy sits right up at the top of the awards food chain, said Warren Littlefield, who was president of NBC Entertainment from 1990-98 and now produces such Emmy-nominated series as Fargo and The Handmaid's Tale. I think that in this age of infinite choice, the branding that comes with Emmy nominations and wins is more important that ever before. These awards are a navigational device directing viewers to your show, he said.

The influx of marketing money into the nominations and awards process is more intense than ever this year, making it feel like smaller networks are at a distinct disadvantage. But all awards remain subjective and that means - marketing be damned - everyone's got a shot until the winners are announced.

I don't know that it's ever a level playing field, said Jennifer Salke, NBC president of entertainment. We have to look at what we are doing and we are really truly striving for hits. A hit is This Is Us or The Voice. Our No. 1 priority is to create big shows that break through culturally. If we can get awards recognition on top of that, that's great too.

Often, those two goals do not intersect - TV's biggest hits are often not Emmy's darlings. But sometimes fate intervenes, as it did for This Is Us.

This is Emmy?

The series is the first Big Four broadcast drama to be nominated for outstanding drama since CBS' The Good Wife in 2011 (although PBS' Downton Abbey was nominated best drama every year from 2012-16).

Getting a broadcast drama into the mix has become increasingly challenging as well-funded new players such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu have entered the race and taken a page from the HBO playbook, which was again this year's Emmy nomination leader with 111. These streaming services and cable networks have no broadcast standards to adhere to, they can make as many or as few episodes as they want and they can premiere their shows whenever they want, with no specific schedules to fill. And Emmysare important to these up-and-comers, who are looking to grow subscribers.

Broadcast networks have to make twice the episodes at half the cost, said Jonnie Davis, president of creative affairs for Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that produces This Is Us as well as fellow Emmy nominees Modern Family, Feud: Bette and Joan, Genius, The Americans and Homeland. It would be such an empowering message for the community to have a broadcast network get the win.

This Is Us sprang from the mind of Dan Fogelman, who came to Twentieth from ABC less than three years ago. He had already been working on This Is Us, which is inspired by his own family and was originally intended as a movie, but, as he told Davis, this thing wants to be a television show.

From the get-go, the studio was excited about Fogelman' s highly personal project. I knew we had something great on our hands three seconds after I read the last sentence of the pilot script, Davis said. And everyone on our team spent the weekend calling and emailing each other after reading it.

Audiences responded immediately to the show, with NBC's upfront trailer for it going immediately viral with an estimated more than 100 million views across Facebook, YouTube and other digital platforms.

The pilot didn't disappoint either, with 10 million viewers tuning in. By season's end, This Is Us was broadcast TV's top drama, upsetting Fox's Empire with a 4.8 full-season ratings average among adults 18-49 and 15.3 million viewers tuning in.

Being broadcast TV's top-rated drama with a two-year renewal might be enough, but an Emmy win would be the capper on a dream year for the series as it kicks off season two on Tuesday, Sept. 26.

We are huge fans of network TV and entertainment that's for a mass audience that really speaks to the country, said Isaac Aptaker, co-showrunner with Elizabeth Berger on This Is Us. We are beyond thrilled to be recognized by the country and by the critics and our own creative community.

The p

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