‍

When Rick Lewchuk – former senior vice president, creative marketing and brand standards for CNN Worldwide – exited the company in March 2023, he almost immediately launched his marketing consulting firm, Film at 11 Marketing. In that new role, he’s been able to share his marketing and creative expertise with entertainment companies both as near as Chicago and as far as London and Abu Dhabi. 

As GEMA opens its annual Local Awards competition, Spotlight discussed the state of local television with Lewchuk, as well as the different domestic and international  opportunities that have opened to him in the latest act of his storied career. 

‍Spotlight: After you departed CNN in March 2023, you launched Film at 11 Marketing. How is that going? What about it has surprised you thus far?

‍Lewchuk: Everything about it has surprised me. When I launched it, I really did not know what expectations to have. A lot of the stuff that has come my way were not things I had even considered I would be doing. I have the luxury of taking projects that are of interest to me. It’s not about the money, it’s about keeping me interested in what I’m doing.

I’ve been working with design firm Pointed Pixel in London acting as a creative director for them and we just extended the relationship. Working as a CD for a London design firm was not initially in the cards for what I thought I was going to do. 

I spent a good bit of time last year in Abu Dhabi helping to brand Sky News Arabia with their marketing. That also wasn’t on my dance card when I started this company. It’s quite intense helping a network in another language in which I have no fluency – dealing with that is an interesting challenge.

‍Spotlight: How have these opportunities come to you?

‍Lewchuk: Via people I’ve known in the industry through the years. When I was a free agent, they came calling. I’m on the board of directors for a studio production studio in Canada now called Bright North Studios. It’s owned in part by RedBird IMI, of which Jeff Zucker [former president of CNN] is CEO. 

‍Spotlight: When you originally announced Film at 11, you were planning on providing your consulting services to local television stations. Has that happened? 

‍Lewchuk: Right now, I’m not actively working with any local TV stations. I’ve worked with some in different capacities. I love it and I want to get back to that local flavor. 

The local stations have fallen on hard times right now. It’s a real grind for them. What happened at Tegna [the FCC under President Biden declined to approve its sale to a group of investors led by private equity firm Apollo Global Management] really sent shock waves through the industry. Stations need this type of assistance, however; when you don’t even have a marketing department at a local station any more, it’s pretty hard to help them. I’m probably doing more pro bono work for people at local stations, trying to help them through rough spots. 

Part of the problem is that so many of these station groups have created centralized marketing departments. They haven’t been real successful with what they’ve been doing with it. There are better ways they can do that centralization. I’m more interested in what Nexstar is doing with its  local stations. Every local station is totally independent with their marketing at Nexstar. 

I’ve spent the past 18 months helping Nexstar’s NewsNation in Chicago with their marketing. When so many people are racing to try to figure out the digital future and abandoning what they are doing on broadcast and cable, Nexstar is embracing it. It’s still a good business. We have to get to digital at some point, but while we’re here we’re going to do a good job of being important to the local markets that we serve.

NewsNation embraces those local stations. When fires broke out in Los Angeles, NewsNation wasn’t rushing to get one of their reporters there; instead, they embraced KTLA’s coverage and presented that on a national basis. There wasn’t this separation of local stations and news networks. Frankly, people got their information in LA first from those local TV stations, and in many cases it was vital information. We really need to understand and embrace that. This is an opportunity for local stations to take that example and show those communities why they are important.

TV stations need to embrace the local community and put their focus on what they are doing on broadcast in those local newscasts. So many of them are focused on pushing their app to watch their streaming, which hasn’t really worked. People want their news live, they don’t want to watch recorded news on an app. 

‍Spotlight: I’ve seen NewsNation’s rebrand. Could you talk a little bit more about your work with that organization?

‍Jonathan Killian and Dan Brown, with whom I worked at CNN, run the marketing and design group at NewsNation. Jonathan worked on the international side and Dan wasn’t as involved in the election planning. So they needed a playbook on promoting elections and CNN’s playbook for that was all in my head so that’s what they wanted to take advantage of. 

Every election campaign unfolds differently. Typically, there’s a normal cadence to election campaigns so we would plan those things out almost two years in advance. It will come as no news to anyone that that didn’t work with this election.

I advised them to hold back. I said, ‘at some point, this election is going to get interesting and we need to prepare so we can react to it. Whatever that shoe that’s going to drop isn’t known to us yet but when it happens we can’t be scrambling. We need to be fast and nimble to be able to promote.’

That shoe dropping was the debate, quickly followed by the attempted assassination of Trump and Biden dropping out. NewsNation was prepared and they were turning spots faster than any other news network. Their coverage around the election became their biggest nights of the year – they grew their audience exponentially, while CNN had the worst election night numbers that it had had in years. 

During a national event like an election, everybody has to promote their unique proposition. One I identified is NewsNation reporter Ali Bradley who lives on the Texas border and her full-time gig is reporting on the border. That’s something that no other cable news network has. Ali has relationships with the people who are working on the border. She’s right there reporting on everything that happens. Obviously, with what’s happening now with the new administration, there’s a real focus on that type of reporting. We worked on a whole campaign that’s still ongoing just on Ali Bradley to get people to understand that NewsNation has that unique proposition available for them to watch. 

That’s what a new network like NewsNation has to do – they have to give viewers a reason to watch, they have to give them something that they can’t get anywhere else. 

‍Spotlight: Do you think the pendulum will ever swing back to a facts-based approach?

‍Lewchuk: People are creatures of wanting to reinforce what they already believe. Reinforcing those beliefs has been a good business for neworks like Fox. I don’t think there’s going to be a network for all people. The days of people of all backgrounds watching the CBS Evening News are gone. I don’t think the pendulum will swing back because people like that bias. 

‍Spotlight: What role would you say social media plays in all of this and how should marketers interact with that? 

‍Lewchuk: Social is really important. You have to think of things like Reddit being social media. You need to go where people are talking. As marketers we have to look at the creative that we do and think about the creative that we do as different from what we do on television. When we get on social, we need to think about it as marketing material that people want to share. 

People want to put material out that people like and are going to share. If you post some fact that people didn’t know anything about, that stuff gets shared. Some of the social creative that was going out about NewsNation’s coverage of the border were these little videos that showed how Chinese immigrants crossed the border by coming into South America. NewsNation begins to build a feeling that they are giving you something interesting and you are much more likely to share it. There’s something about the human nature of social media and people’s need to share information and then using that as a marketing tactic. 

‍Spotlight: The “Facts First” campaign that CNN did in 2017 still stands out to me. Is there anything about that campaign that you still apply in your work today?  

‍Lewchuk: The simplicity of that creative is something that people remember.  Everyone is hot on this idea that artificial intelligence (AI) can do our creative now. AI is never going to come up with that idea for an apple and a banana – that is very human to come up with that kind of idea. 

The other thing I also emphasize is that as well known as the Facts First campaign was – most people just called it ‘apple and banana’ – it was part of the zeitgeist for a while, but we spent zero on media for that; everything was earned media. It racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in earned media and some of that you couldn’t track. How do you put a value on it when Ellen DeGeneres does a whole segment on something? 

We had a back-up plan to buy media but that campaign broke so quickly that we just said ‘nah, we don’t need to throw fuel on this fire, it’s doing just fine.’ We really just let it run. We were prepared. 

Facts First is an example I use in many of my presentations of what creative can do.

Clients are trying to use AI a little in their creative. I caution against it when I’m talking to people in the news environment. If you do use it, you need to be upfront with what you are doing. It’s a tool and you need to figure out how to use this tool and work with it. Marketing still takes place between the ears, that’s where it has to come from. 

‍Spotlight: Last question: what’s the coolest spot or campaign or just thing in entertainment you’ve seen recently? 

‍Lewchuk: The 2025 sizzle reel from Netflix is outstanding and I haven’t seen work this great in probably 10 years. It is a master class in storytelling, editing, cinematography, sound design, and sonic branding. I could watch this one another 50 times and not be bored.