MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA: OpenTV has dumped stateside agency of record Miller-Shandwick and handed its dollars 500,000 US account to Manning, Selvage & Lee.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA: OpenTV has dumped stateside agency of record
Miller-Shandwick and handed its dollars 500,000 US account to Manning,
Selvage & Lee.
Last week’s announcement by OpenTV, which manufactures software that
enables digital interactive TV, concluded an agency review involving
pitches by hi-tech heavy-hitters Text 100, Niehaus Ryan Wong and the
Weber Group.
It also formalized the end of the Mountain View company’s relationship
with Miller-Shandwick, which had worked with OpenTV from August 1998
until last month.
According to OpenTV director of global PR Carolyn Bretschneider, MS&L
won the business because of its creativity and its Hollywood ties.
’As we grow on a global basis and into the US, the emphasis on
relationships with the (US television) networks will become more and
more important to us,’ she said, referring to MS&L’s longstanding
showbiz and consumer-oriented clients like Disney Online, eBay and
Nestle USA. ’Also, Manning was very creative and very aggressive with
media relations, which was important to us.’
MS&L will support the company’s upcoming US launch by targeting cable
and satellite operators, industry influencers and the media. The account
will be serviced primarily out of the firm’s Los Angeles office, with
support from teams in San Francisco and New York.
OpenTV’s software, which enables cable and satellite operators to offer
a range of services and supplemental information to their program
line-ups without requiring an additional set-top box or a keyboard, is
installed in more than 4.5 million digital set-top boxes worldwide. The
company counts Microsoft’s WebTV among its chief competitors.
