Advertising on "Pawn Stars", one of the most-watched cable shows in the U.S., is one of the many ways GLM attracted thousands of collectors, museum curators, gallery owners and antiques/history aficionados to see more than 900 dealers from 22 countries at The Original Miami Beach Antique Show. The 51st edition wrapped up last week at the Miami Beach Convention Center with attendance up 5% year-over-year.
 
“Pawn Stars” is a reality television series that focuses on the interactions at a famous family-run pawn shop in Las Vegas as customers bring in all sorts of artifacts to sell. It is the History Channel's highest-rated series, with an average of seven million viewers a week, and has been one of the key drivers of the network's rapid growth over the past few years. 
 
“Pawn Stars” was just launched in 2009, which demonstrates why you need to stay on top of what's happening in traditional, not just digital media. New opportunities are emerging here, too, and you may find show marketing solutions in areas where you don't expect.
 
The network has labeled the genre of which “Pawn Stars” and related shows are part of as "artifactual entertainment", and this genre is a natural fit for The Original Miami Beach Antique Show. The excellent mapping of this series to this event's audience made it an easy decision for GLM to add this program to the ad buy. Targeting is a key part of the value prop that cable nets offer show organizers for their audience acquisition campaigns. 
 
The “Pawn Stars” ads were just one part of a much larger spot cable ad buy. GLM used spot vs. network cable advertising as spot cable enabled it to buy ad space on select programs, on various cable networks, in specific geographic areas. Dollars were allocated specifically against the desired target set which provided a highly efficient ad buy.

Cristopher Levy is managing partner of Encore Media Partners. Encore is an audience strategy, marketing and media buying agency covering traditional, digital and mobile platforms, which specializes in local, national and global trade and consumer shows, exhibitions and conferences. Reach him at clevy@encoremediapartners.com.