When Regional Goes National: Streaming Service Zeam Launches During the Super Bowl
Can local TV make the jump to streaming? A startup called Zeam is betting that it can, and it plans to use Super Bowl Sunday and actor John Stamos.
Zeam is a new streaming home for news, sports and culture from hundreds of local television stations across the country in one central, highly personalized hub, and it’s free, live and on-demand.
The new service is launching during the Super Bowl buzz period, but rather than buying Super Bowl inventory nationally, Jack Perry, Zeam’s founder and owner, chose to make market buys through Gray TV/ CBS stations in almost every available U.S. market, including paid and organic social/digital, OOH and experiential activations.
The creative for the regional campaign stars John Stamos speaking a message that touts the power of local. That means the creative is personalized for each market, leveraging local addressability at scale to create relevance for hyper-local audiences across the country.
The spots will air during the third quarter of the Super Bowl.
The campaign comes from Known, a media, creative and strategy agency that has been Zeam’s AOR for strategy, creative, paid media and social since last year when it started working on Zeam’s brand positioning, messaging strategy, identity and design, data science and consumer intelligence, advanced analytics and mapping potential audiences.
“The Super Bowl launch is just the beginning. Jack Perry has one goal: Own local. And we think he’s going to achieve it,” Ross Martin, president of Known, told ADWEEK.
Owning local
Zeam comes from Syncbak, a company that powers many OTT solutions, including live streaming for Paramount+, Hulu, fuboTV and the NFL. Gray Television, the National Association of Broadcasters and Morgan Murphy Media back it. Zeam is designed to be complementary to streaming bingers so they can get informed and entertained through their local stations.
Perry’s mission for Zeam is to connect every broadcaster to every viewer, which also creates opportunities for marketers to reach and follow, at scale, local and regional audiences. Zeam has already gotten the buy-in from nearly 300 stations and 30 groups, including Gray, CBS, News-Press & Gazette, Hearst and Morgan Murphy. At launch, Zeam will have station representation that covers nearly 80% of designated market areas.
For consumers, Zeam will give them a local lens into places and events that matter to them.
“As viewers and the industry continue to migrate to streaming, local television stations need to find a way to build a sustainable business that helps them not just survive but thrive in the streaming age,” said Perry in a statement.
