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Campaign Imminent: UScellular taps new media AORs after promoting CMO (Score 57)

Ovative Group, concluding an agency search handled by Mercer Island Group. Harmelin will oversee brand-related media, focusing on building brand awareness and generating consideration; on the other hand, Ovative will oversee performance-based media, focusing on a "customer-centric approach to digital media strategy and execution" - both online and in-store - to drive subscriber growth.

This announcement comes not long after UScellular promoted Eric Jagher to SVP and CMO in January 2022. Jagher joined the company in 2006 and was most recently its consumer SVP.

According to iSpot, UScellular has allocated roughly $464 toward national TV commercials YTD; it had only allocated roughly $7 by this point last year. The company only allocated roughly $78 toward this channel last year after having allocated roughly $55k in 2020. UScellular's 2022 commercials have aired during The Heartland on "Big Ten Network." 

So far this year, Pathmatics reports the company has spent approximately $2.9m on digital ads, less than a third of the approximately $6.7m it spent within the same 2021 timeframe. In 2021, UScellular ended up spending approximately $17.6m on digital ads, a huge drop from the approximately $53m it spent in 2020. The company has earned ~357.9m digital impressions YTD via Facebook (75%), Instagram (21%) and desktop display (3%) ads. 

As you can tell, TV is getting a lot more attention than digital; this leads me to believe UScellular is primarily targeting millennials and Gen-X. Kantar data, shows the company also utilizes radio, print (newspapers), OOH and local broadcast. 

Agency & martech readers - UScellular could conduct additional agency reviews now, so keep the company on your radar for PR, creative, digital analytics and/or social media management work. Your competition includes PR AOR Lapiz.