My Week with 2008: Sprout and Bright House

 

Back in 2008, Sprout launched in Tampa, Florida on Bright House Networks (now Spectrum) as Channel 121, and two commercials, the videos you see above, were made to promote.

These promos used the cliché purple television branding from the "We Share" campaign as well as the music from that promo, and featured both clips from The Good Night Show, The Let's Go Show, The Sunny Side Up Show, The Sprout Sharing Show, Barney & Friends, Sesame Street, Caillou, Bob the Builder, Make Way for Noddy, Sprout Diner, and Fifi and the Flowertots, and footage of real kids and their parents goofing out and having fun (the clip of the kids and their mom having breakfast was used in both a Great Sprout Tuck-In PSA and the "Cereal" bumper).

According to Sprout's Jenni Glenn, Sprout previously launched on Time Warner Cable in California and Texas under an affiliation agreement with Time Warner Cable that also extends to Bright House Networks.

My Week with Promotions and Initiatives

• Sprout Please
• Sprout Smart
• The Great Sprout Tuck-In
• Save Sprout
• Produce for Kids

My Week with Promotions and Initiatives: Produce for Kids

 Happy October, Sproutlets! Today is also the first day of Sprout-tober, so stay tuned for Instagram posts in the intervening thirty-one days. Anyhoo, let's get into today's topic.

In 2012, Sprout partnered with the website Produce for Kids to share healthy kid-friendly recipes.

Image from Weekly Bite

In addition, Sprout and Produce for Kids partnered for "Get Healthy, Give Hope" signs in grocery stores featuring characters from LazyTown, Noodle and Doodle, and Chica herself (she's in the above picture), and characters would make appearances in stores IN PERSON.

My Week with Promotions and Initiatives: Save Sprout

 

The Save Sprout campaign was created by The Chase, who also created the Live Sprout branding.

You see, Sprout and DIRECTV have been neglecting for a year in 2012, and it was announced that DIRECTV would no longer carry Sprout. The people at Sprout launched a website where people would call 1-866-9-SPROUT or talk about why they loved Sprout.

It totally worked!

My Week with Promotions and Initiatives: The Great Sprout Tuck-In

 

This post I was looking forward to since I am a big fan of sleeping and bedtime. In 2008, Sprout teamed up with Genevieve Pitturo's The Pajama Program, which was founded in 2001, to launch The Great Sprout Tuck-In, an initiative for donating new books and pajamas to children who don't have them. The initiative was convinced by Lauren Monks. (source)

Two PSAs were made for the initiative. One with Nina from The Good Night Show helping the Pajanimals get ready for bed and talking about the Tuck-In.

…and the other featuring Nina reading to Star. This one incorporates clips from Sprout shows and blocks - as well as the purple television.

The initiative had its own section of Sproutonline.com. Coloring pages made to promote the Tuck-In included "Pin the Polka Dots on Chica's Pajamas" and "Make Your Own Pajamas." According to here, it appears Pitturo was on The Sunny Side Up Show once.

In 2010, Liz Filios and Chica of The Sunny Side Up Show held a pajama party on their block to promote the initiative and invited puppet characters from other Sprout shows and blocks. Similarly, Nina hosted pajama drive parties to promote the Tuck In as well.

My Week with Promotions and Initiatives: Sprout Smart

 

I'm deeply sorry if I blogged about this in a previous post. In the 2000s, childhood obesity became a widely talked about issue. Most children's edutainment venues were addressing the issue, including Sprout, as it introduced Sprout Diner in 2006. In 2008, Sprout decided to crank it up to eleven by teaming up with Mott's, the leading fruit juice brand.

Sprout, KidsHealth (who accredited the recipes on Sprout Diner and The Let's Go Show), and Mott's for Tots (Mott's preschool brand) created Sprout Smart, a parenting website about healthy living that focused on a new health-related theme each month (i.e. "The ABCs of Getting ZZZs" about sleep). The website launched in 2008, and the above video (which I uploaded on my channel a year ago) is a commercial for the site. As shown in the video's description, it was originally from the Multivu account on Dailymotion, but I got it from a different website since that video was removed from Dailymotion in 2019.

Image from It's All Free Online

The logo was also used on forks and sippy cups.

My Week with Promotions and Initiatives: Sprout Please

 

Madeline Fretz - Back in its early days, Sprout was a small channel that reached very few homes. As a way to get itself in your neighborhood, the channel launched a few commercials, posters, online advertisements, and a website called "Sprout Please!," created by Comcast's own Lauren Monks. (source)

The phrase "Sprout Please!" was considered a throwback to the “I want my MTV!" cry of the 80s.

Two commercials were made with people and characters saying "Sprout Please!," and they both ended with Sprout's usual female announcer saying "Ask for the Sprout channel in your neighborhood, call 1-866-9-SPROUT today or say 'Sprout Please!'"

The campaign also had its own website - which featured crafts, recipes, and coloring pages from Sproutonline.com, as well as a printable coloring page in which site visitors could talk about why they want Sprout.

Image from Millennial Marketing

The logo was also used in country-wide banners and posters.

The Wiggles. When the happy clappy Australian band arrived on Sprout in 2009, the Sprout Please website was briefly renamed "Wiggles Please,"and was advertised in promos and country-wide.

I guess the logo was last used in 2010, but I may be wrong. Anyways, this was a great way to promote Sprout, and was pretty fun when it lasted.