Cable companies big and small have been losing television subscribers — millions of them — to satellite and telecommunications competitors for years. But Time Warner Cable says it is ready to claw some of them back.
On Monday, the company — the second-largest cable provider in the country behind Comcast — will begin a marketing campaign aimed at former subscribers who might be having second thoughts about their current video service.
The company says it will spend at least $50 million on broadcast, print, online and direct mail ads for the campaign, which it is calling “The Better Guarantee.”
The ads convey the idea that while the company’s cable service did not always live up to expectations in the past, it has become better.
“We, as a company, are fundamentally different and better than we were a few years ago when these upstart competitors started coming in,” said Jeffrey A. Hirsch, the chief marketing officer for residential services at Time Warner Cable. By upstarts, he was referring to Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse, two relatively new fiber optic television and Internet providers that have gained subscribers at the expense of cable providers.
Some of the Time Warner Cable ads specifically challenge Verizon, saying it promised monthly savings that have not panned out.
“That promise of new isn’t such a great promise, and people are starting to come back to Time Warner Cable,” Mr. Hirsch said. “So we decided it’s time to put some muscle behind the idea.”
The campaign announcement comes a week before Time Warner Cable releases its fourth-quarter earnings, which may show deepening losses in television subscribers, known in the industry as basic video subscribers. Industry analysts at Jefferies & Company published a forecast last week that had Time Warner Cable losing 140,000 such subscribers, a slight increase from the 129,000 it lost in the same quarter of 2011. The same forecast had three other cable providers stemming their losses year-over-year.
“The Better Guarantee” is an extension of “Enjoy Better,” a brand-image campaign that Time Warner Cable began last February to retain existing subscribers as well as win new ones. The new ads point to specific improvements the company has made: smartphone apps, on-demand TV options and narrower windows of time for home service calls. Gone are the dreaded four-hour windows, the company says; two-hour windows are now the norm and one-hour windows are being put in place.
In an interview by phone, Mr. Hirsch also mentioned “much faster Internet than we had two, three years ago” and a home security service.
To entice former subscribers to try Time Warner Cable again, the ads promote a 30-day money-back guarantee. “If the consumer doesn’t see that we’ve improved our service, we’ll send them their money back,” said Gregg Fujimoto, a senior vice president for the company.
Some of the ads feature actual subscribers, explaining why they came back to the company. Mr. Fujimoto said there would be use of social networking Web sites as well as traditional advertising media.
Other cable providers, facing the same competition from satellite and telecommunications providers, have also tried to burnish their reputations lately with ad campaigns. Comcast started a new phase of its marketing for Xfinity, its consumer services, last summer. The providers have also invested an enormous amount of money in infrastructure so that their television and Internet services are on par, or better, than their competition’s.
The providers are up against persistent discontent from subscribers who say their monthly bills are too high and their set-top boxes are too slow. Surveys for the University of Michigan’s American Consumer Satisfaction Index have shown for three straight years that Verizon FiOS is the highest-regarded television provider in the country.
AT&T and two satellite providers, DirecTV and Dish Network, have also ranked above the industry average, while Time Warner Cable, Comcast and other cable providers have remained below the average. But the 2012 survey had some good news for Time Warner Cable: the company’s score ticked up four percentage points, the most of any television provider on the index.
Time Warner Cable Ad Campaign Aims at Regaining Customers
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Time Warner Cable Ad Campaign Aims at Regaining Customers
