John Miller to Helm New NBC Sports Agency

John Miller, the chief marketing officer of NBC Universal’s television group, has emerged from quasi retirement, shifting his focus to the company’s sports assets. Creator of the classic “Must See TV” tagline, Miller will develop and oversee the NBC Sports Agency, an in-house arm designed to market all aspects of the NBC Sports unit. Work on the new agency will begin in earnest once Comcast’s acquisition of NBCU is complete. The deal is expected to close by Friday (Jan. 28). Miller said the new sports agency would be closely modeled on the successful NBC Agency, which he steered from 1999-2010. The agency will be charged with marketing all NBC Sports Group assets, including the soon-to-be-integrated Comcast properties Versus and Golf Channel, as well as the 11 regional sports networks. The new property will also serve as an agency for NBC Sports’ growing list of advertisers and rights holders who have collaborated with the Peacock on marketing initiatives. (For example, NBC Sports has recently produced campaigns for partners such as the United States Olympic Committee, National Football League and National Hockey League, intuitively linking athletes with sponsors like Procter & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Mercedes. A recent spot for DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket package featured Eli Manning outfoxing big brother Peyton; the :30 also functioned as a call-out to NBC’s Sunday Night Football coverage.) A 29-year NBCU veteran, Miller became CMO in 2004. Last summer, he handed day-to-day marketing activities to Adam Stotsky, freeing himself to concentrate on the nascent NBCU-Comcast integration. At the time, it appeared that the 60-year-old Miller was transitioning into an early retirement. That didn’t last long. “I decided to stick around for a few years,” Miler said. “It’s an opportunity to try and develop an organization based on the original NBC Agency template, one that would allow us to innovate, to marshal our forces for the good of the rights holders and the clients and pull together for a common purpose.”Miller added that the union of the legacy NBC Sports assets and the Comcast channels should offer even greater economies of scale. “With all these assets coming together, we have the means to create campaigns that are bigger and better, and work across all platforms . . . and maybe we can deliver them a little bit faster.” Also providing a gentle push in the direction of 30 Rock was Miller’s wife, who had wanted to move to the East Coast after all those years in Los Angeles. An early preview of what sports fans may come to expect appeared early on in NBC’s Sunday afternoon broadcast of the Flyers-Blackhawks game. During a break in the action, NBC ran a spot promoting Versus’ coverage of the 58th annual NHL All-Star Game, which airs Jan. 30. “The spot has a certain theatrical flair, which I found appealing,” Miller said. “We can use our reach to provide a certain amount of awareness to the fact that the All-Star Game is still on Versus.” Cross-promotion on the various NBC Sports properties is just one aspect of what to expect from the NBC Sports Agency, which arose in response to the demands of sponsors. “Every media company is doing more work on behalf of the clients looking to go forward with more ambitious integrated campaigns,” Miller said. “The agency simply allows us to execute more quickly and easily, while expanding the reach of any cross-platform initiatives.” In addition to overseeing the NBC Sports Agency, Miller will continue to serve as chairman of the newly expanded NBC Universal Marketing Council.

Convergent TV

John Miller to Helm New NBC Sports Agency

Anthony Crupi

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Anthony Crupi