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He’s Got Some Surprises in Store

Mar 3, 2003  •  Post A Comment

It’s all about point of purchase for George Giatzis, senior VP, entertainment sales, for Premier Retail Networks, which creates and maintains Nielsen-monitored in-store television networks, currently available in more than 5,400 stores across every DMA. The networks deliver 170 million gross impressions each month.
He was formerly VP of national advertising sales for Oxygen Media and also held advertising sales and marketing positions with College Television Network, Discovery Communications and Major League Baseball Prods., among others.
“PRN played a key role in supporting the launch of Disney’s Home Video/DVD release for `Monsters Inc.’ at Wal-Mart, one of our retail partners,” Mr. Giatzis said when asked to identify his most interesting recent deal. “We produced custom long-form programs that were created from animated footage supplied by Disney. The program aired in heavy rotation on the Wal-Mart Television Network, the branded in-store network in over 2,400 stores throughout the country. A month-long teaser campaign led up to special-event programming on the day the HV/DVD was released.
“Supplementing these two components was a post-launch campaign that included both sustaining and Holiday-oriented creative. Over 100 million store visits took place at Wal-Mart throughout the duration of the campaign. `Monsters Inc.’ went on to become the record holder for both one-day-combined videocassette and DVD sales and one-week-combined sales, selling 5 million and 11 million units, respectively.”
From Mr. Giatzis’ perspective, scripted television programming is poised for a comeback. “I respect the business model of reality programming and how profitable it can be, but is short-term profitability worth risking long-term success? Nearly two dozen new reality series will debut by next fall,” he said. “What happens when the hysteria fades and the genre exhausts itself? Where’s the pipeline for quality scripted TV? And besides, something must be done for all those poor out-of-work Ivy League television writers.”
If he wasn’t in media selling, Mr. Giatzis said, he would be in music. “I’m absolutely crazy about music, both playing and listening, and people who know me ask why I never made that my career. Perhaps if the Rolling Stones needed a third guitar player or a speaker company was looking for someone to sit there all day and test their products, I could have stepped up. But c’est la vie, media-and-marketing song-and-dance man it shall be.”