TI Kicks Off $100M DLP Ad Campaign

NEW YORK — Texas Instruments has kicked off its 2007 DLP integrated advertising campaign, which will include television spots on "Monday Night Football," NCAA football games and Nextel Cup NASCAR racing.

The $100 million effort will also employ billboards, radio and will expand online advertising, targeting sites used for consumer research before making HDTV purchases, as well as on banner ads and spots on ESPN.com.

Radio advertising will run in 12 markets along the "Chase for the Cup" NASCAR racing series.

In addition, TI will be working with key national and regional retailers during the campaign, using five-second tags at the end of some TV ads to bring in retail partners selling DLP TVs from TI's manufacturer partners.

The campaign will continue to employ the "It's Amazin. It's the Mirrors" slogan, using an elephant next to a little girl holding "a magical light box," which symbolizes the "millions of tiny mirrors" used in a DLP chip to present large screen high-definition images.

The light box icon will appear at various points in ESPN's sports telecasts, as well as in the main commercial messages.

This year's ad effort was crafted after doing extensive research on the effectiveness of last year's campaign. Identified for inclusion in the spots were four key areas: the elimination or reduction of motion blur over rival technologies; the bigger the picture the better, playing into the affordability of the big-screen experience with DLP; the ability to present trillions of colors; and the elimination of any burn-in threat.

The TV spots will focus on the bigger-is-better and motion-blur messages, said Jan Spence, TI's brand and advertising director.

TV spots started Sept. 8 with the kickoff of NCAA football on ABC and ESPN and continues with "Monday Night Football" broadcasts on ESPN.

Ads for DLP will also appear on various ESPN programming including SportsCenter.