On Sept. 23, 1999, the drama "True Crime" went trucking to Tucson from a small warehouse in San Jose, California. The comedy "Analyze This" was off to Annapolis, Maryland. And two classic doctors, one named "Doolittle" and the other "Strangelove," prepared to make house calls in St. Louis, Missouri and Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Seven years and a lot of DVDs later, the movie subscription service launched that September day approaches a milestone few could have thought possible. Sometime next year, at its current rate, Netflix says it will deliver the one billionth movie in its history.
The company said that is considering a number of ways to mark the occasion and that ideas are welcome when they announced that the impending milestone will be the centerpiece of a new national advertising campaign that debuted in October and underscores for consumers the scale, reliability and rapid adoption of its service. The company currently ships approximately one and a half million DVDs a day from 41 distribution centers geographically dispersed across the United States.
The new ads will carry the campaign line "Nearly one billion movies delivered so far. Zero late fees." and enjoy an initial network TV run across all day parts on NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox. The commercials will appear on such highly visible shows as "Grey's Anatomy," "Dancing with the Stars," "Ugly Betty," "CSI," "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," and "Late Night with David Letterman." Netflix said the new campaign message will also be delivered through network radio and will be integrated into its online communications through ads on leading Web sites like Yahoo!, MSN and AOL, as well as its own site.
"The central message we want to convey to consumers is that Netflix offers the easiest, most convenient and most reliable way to enjoy the widest variety of movies," said Neve Savage, the company's vice president of marketing. "We deliver that theme, and our run-up to a billion deliveries, with some entertaining and attention-grabbing production, as well as a touch of humor."
At the end of September, Netflix was serving 5.7 million subscribers with a library of 65,000 titles spanning more than 200 genres. The service is widely recognized as among the best and most reliable in Internet commerce and has for three consecutive polls been named the number one Web site for customer satisfaction by the independent researchers ForeSee Results and FGI Research.
For more information, see the Netflx press release.
