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"Just imagine if Cat Diaires featured strategically placed Whiskas bags and Fresh Step litter in each episode. Montreal-based Brandfame plans to do just that. The product placement agency hopes to become the middleman between companies that want a piece of the viral video audience and the people who make the shorts."
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via Underwire
"The ad story of Superbowl 2007 was consumer generation, now it seems the movement is on the wane.
For example, Teresa Iezzi of Creativity is currently mesmerized by the production in the latest ads from Nike and Halo.
While lo-fi might be the dominant form on YouTube, agencies at least appear to be moving on.
So, was consumer-generation just a production technique for television commercials all along?
Was there ever anything deeper going on?
Most campaigns have token gestures to CG, but not much more.
In
the product development space there seem to be the odd examples of
marketers tapping into the creativity of consumers for new ideas, but
this limited.
Are marketers just happy with the same old
command and control formula and do they feel satisfied that focus
groups and conventional research are the best ways of bringing consumer
thinking to their business?
Are they scared of consumer ideas?
This
all seems to run counter to the way the social networking model is
developing. People are looking for dialog with other people and brands
should be no different.
The killer application is finding a
way to tap into consumer thinking and creativity through the social
network, but to do it in a way that doesn’t involve classical
advertising.
Agencies need to find a way to make this happen for their clients or someone else will."
via Infux Insights
"Video-on-demand is steadily increasing in popularity and will occupy well over a third of Americans' TV-viewing time by 2012, according to research done by information solutions company Pike & Fischer. The report examines the shift in TV viewing from scheduled broadcasts to shows that can be viewed at any time. The firm says that as viewers' preferences change over the next several years, advertisers' focus will change as well.
According to Pike & Fischer, the majority of US households will watch some form of video-on-demand through cable, satellite, or fiber-optic lines within the next five years. But Americans won't be adding video-on-demand shows on top of their regular TV viewing—the firm predicts that the average monthly time spent watching television will remain relatively stable. Instead, the proportion of time spent watching video-on-demand shows will grow, from 8.5 percent in 2007 to 38 percent in 2012. "That translates into nearly two hours of VOD viewing per day," writes the firm.
A report published in August by The Diffusion Group appears to support Pike & Fischer's data. It stated that although only about 12 percent of people who rent movies regularly reported using video-on-demand services, non-traditional rental services (such as video-on-demand) were growing in popularity. Download services like iTunes, Unbox, or Xbox Live Video, on the other hand, have only made a "negligible impact" on rental behavior thus far.
But what does this mean for advertisers, who will no longer be able to bank on certain demographics watching shows on specific days and times? The shift from live broadcast to time-shifted television viewing has scared some advertisers in recent years, not only because time-specific ads lose their relevancy (that sale on Saturday isn't so important when it happened last Saturday), but because of many viewers' fondness for skipping ads. But Pike & Fischer's director of Broadband Advisory Services, Scott Sleek, says that this shouldn't be the case. "Video on demand will enable more targeted advertising, based on user profiles and viewing habits—the same way sites like Amazon.com operate today, 'Sleek said in a statement. "That will make television an appealing marketing platform for advertisers.'"
via Ars Technica
"Here’s another success story for viral video marketing online. The Blendtec guys have increased their sales five times over thanks to a little segment called “Will it Blend?”
The most memorable of these clips is probably the iPhone episode, where we all watched a brand new iPhone, not even a week old, get shredded to smithereens. All for the purpose of proving how strong that darn blender blade really is. From marbles to golf balls to a soda can, Utah-based Blendtec has entertained us all with its daring and audacious determination to blend the seemingly impossible. The company, which makes blenders for consumer and commercial use, has increased its sales into the millions, gaining an amount of brand recognition that’s really priceless. Another source of revenue has been the ad-share program through Revver.
These video marketing ploys are starting to look a lot like the Charles Dickens “work-hard-and-save” stories that reeked of happy endings in the shifting world of impending Industrialization. We’ve got a new shift going on now, into the digital world, and it’s stories like Blendtec’s that make us think that we can all be the next LG15 or Chris Crocker (eww).
[via information week]"
via Mashable
"2.5 tonnes of plasticine on set
40 animators
3 weeks
189 2ft bunnies
150 1ft cubes
10ft x 20ft purple wave
30ft giant rabbit.
6 cameras.
40 animators working through 4 hours generated 4 seconds of footage.
40 animators working on the same scene had never been attempted before.
The 60 second spot will be constructed of approximately 100,000 stills."
Sneak peak at Sony Bravia's latest colorful commercial, Play-Doh.
via Coudal
"A photo used in a recent Virgin Mobile ad campaign is the subject of a lawsuit filed by a Texas family. The photo features a teenage girl, Alison Chang, flashing a peace sign, and was used in a variety of print and billboard advertisements. Some of the ads apparently featured the slogan “free text virgin to virgin.”
Chang’s family claims that Virgin Mobile grabbed the picture from Flickr, where one of the girl’s counselors, Justin Ho-Wee Wong, had posted the photo. Wong chose to publish the photo under a Creative Commons license which allows other peoples to republish the photo so long as they credit the photographer. However, the Chang family is claiming the ads caused “grief and humiliation,” and that the photographer was not properly credited.
Both Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons are named in the lawsuit. It should be an interesting case to see just what kind of rights, if any, people have over photos they appear in.
Since we’re not too eager to get sued, if you would like to see the photo in question, you can go here."
via Mashable
"Look what happens when you approach your pals at various hip 'n' trendy magazines with a challenge: Sporting goods manufacturer Puma says, okay, build a $200 bicycle "depicting your magazine's personality" using only recycled bicycle parts. What was the result of this game Puma calls Re-Bike? You might think there'd be a half-dozen hunks of steaming junk, but apparently $200 goes a pretty long way when you're talking recycled parts. Check out the gallery; there are some good-looking bikes in there. Puma will be showing off the finished bicycles at all Bicycle Film Festival venues, and after that they'll all be auctioned off."
via Gizmodo
Antonio sez, "There is a 'viral' Bob Dylan marketing project that
allows people to remix the infamous Subterranean Homesick Blues film
made by D. A. Pennebaker. I made this mash-up with my favorite series,
Battlestar Galactica, titled, 'Subterranean Homesick Alien (a Radiohead
homage).'" Link
via Boing Boing
"A large statue of a man swimming through the grass on the South Bank of the River Thames is unveiled, Tuesday Sept. 18, 2007. The fixture, near Tower Bridge, shown in the background, was commissioned by TV channel The Discovery Channel to promote its newest reality show, 'London Ink'."
Uh, very cool but, how does this promote 'London Ink'? Is that a tattoo on his back?
via Spluch
