Can Madison Avenue make zap-proof ads?

NEW YORK: With millions of viewers poised to sign up for DVR services, network executives have plenty to worry about these days. Already scrambling as younger viewers drift off to play video games and watch DVDs, they face a potentially even more powerful threat: Over the next several years, DVRs, which record TV shows on hard drives instead of on videotapes, are set to hit the mainstream as cable and satellite operators start to offer them at huge discounts.

As a result, the number of DVRs in front of couch potatoes could nearly double, to 5.8 million by the end of 2004, according to tech consulting company the Yankee Group. That number could jump to 24.7 million -- or more than one in every five TV households -- by 2007. By then, SG Cowen Securities Corp. analyst James Marsh projects, TV users will be zapping through more than 60% of the commercials, ignoring an estimated $6.6 billion worth of ads. "The DVR has the potential to blow apart the entire network business model," says media consultant Blair Westlake, a former chairman of Universal TV.


Read the article: www.businessweek.com

Miramax in deal with Mother for creative content and ads

LONDON - Mother has signed a groundbreaking creative deal with Miramax Films that will see the agency providing entertainment concepts as well as advertising and marketing consultation.

Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax, said that the deal was unprecedented. Miramax said that it would have first-look rights to any of Mother's concepts with respect to what it described as branding and media properties.

Read the article: www.brandrepublic.com

Who plays games?

Cocojambo comment:

That computer games represent an efficient marketing medium is slowly becoming accepted by the advertising industry. Unfortunately this realisation is often limited to the ‘poster child’ of the games industry – the action game.

Action games are the most popular genre of computer games (incorporating the sub-genres: shooting games, fighting games, sports simulations, etc) but they are popular with only a subsection of the games audience – primarily young adults and children.

The best selling game of recent years – The Sims – won its mainly female audience with gameplay that is a (very enjoyable) combination of a dolls house and a tamagotchi. The most played game of recent years – Snake – found it’s diverse following by offering a challenge that was little more than a test of reaction times.

Advertisers will benefit by offering consumers ‘advergames’ that are more than an old arcade game with a new skin. Using games isn’t that different from other media – you need to understand your audience, have a clear idea about your goals and message, and then choose the creative that will best meet your goals with that audience. For a TV advert you must consider whether the audience will drawn by humour, by imagery, by character, etc; for games you must consider whether a strategy game, a management game, an action game, or a simulator will find your audience.

As recent reports indicate that the average gamer is now aged 29, 26% of gamers are women aged over 18, whilst 17% of gamers are over 50, it is clear that games can and should be used to do more than sell to 18-34 year old males.

Further Reading - Video games now draw more women than boys: www.forbes.com
Further Reading - Seniors taking to computer games: www.sltrib.com

MG launch viral short film

MG Rover is promising a touch of racy humour in its first online viral marketing campaign, starring model and celebrity Emma B.

Read the article: www.brandrepublic.com

See the film: www.ttr2.co.uk/

TV: from broadcast to broadband

Missed that crucial episode of Eastenders ? Forgot to set the video for Ground Force? Never fear, for, from later this year viewers of BBC television will be able to watch the last seven days' programming online.

Read the article: www.media.guardian.co.uk

Cocojambo comment:

This is one of the most visable signs yet that TV broadcast is about to change forever. A process that began with the remote control will culminate in the advent of PVRs and IP TV: viewers will control what they watch.

Viewers today watch a lot of television programming, and they will continue to do so in the future. However the proportion that is broadcast will continue to decrease. Viewers commonly buy favourite programmes on DVD, which are then consumed in competition to that night's broadcast. Increasingly, programmes are watched from hard disks: due to PVRs and file sharing. And now programming by Internet Protocol (IP).

Consumers will increasing view TV programming as just another form of entertainment to be consumed wherever, and whenever, they please. The reign of the TV scheduler is coming to an end. For advertisers: being an adjunct to the entertainment will be redundant, being a part of it a necessity.

Brand marketers need to look at video games

A lot has been written lately about the disappearing 18 to 34 year-old men. They're still consuming media, but through a greater number of channels, making it tougher to rely on what consumer marketers have relied upon in the past.

One medium that seems to be soaking up young people is video games. (Actually, from a composition standpoint, video games are hitting a lot of older folks, too, but coverage-wise, it's very much an important medium to the younger set.) People are spending tons of time with both PC and console-based games and very few marketers are taking advantage of this fact.

Read the article: www.mediapost.com

Measuring the effectiveness of Branded Entertainment...

There has been an explosion of interest in entertainment marketing in the past several years, with product placement and "brand integration" particularly in the limelight since their success on "Survivor" and "American Idol." But without a standard method of measuring results, many marketers have remained gun-shy or skeptical about putting more dollars behind this type of marketing. Now several companies have entered or are poised to enter the business of quantifying product placement.

Read the article: www.hollywoodreporter.com

Developer creates no-hassle, no-download, TV spots for the web

In a move that could dramatically accelerate the migration of TV advertising to the Internet, Unicast on Tuesday will unveil a new format that is capable of rendering conventional 30-second TV spots online with hardly any of the excruciatingly long download times or bandwidth required of streaming video formats.

Read the article: www.mediapost.com

Advergaming: "The possibilities are pretty incredible" Gartner

A soon-to-be-released Gartner report is predicting that "advergaming"- simply defined as games that incorporate marketing content-is set to surge in the months ahead. The report, previewed at last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, suggests that these games help increase brand and product awareness, customer loyalty, and time spent at an advertiser's web site more effectively than other online marketing devices and programs

Read the article: www.mediapost.com

UK advertisers create a 'virtual' interactive TV advertising channel

For advertisers interested in interactive TV advertising, there's only one option with sufficient coverage to justify development and production costs: Sky Digital. Growing concern over the stranglehold many now feel Sky has over interactive TV, however, has persuaded a number of the UK's most powerful brand owners to take matters into their own hands.

Read the article: www.media.guardian.co.uk

Quiksilver Celebrates 'Riding Giants', Stacy Peralta's Story of Surfing Pioneers

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (Jan. 14, 2004) -- Quiksilver has joined with Forever Films and Studio Canal to bring "Riding Giants" to audiences across the globe. The marketing campaign for Director Stacy Peralta's film "Riding Giants" will be, in concert with the film's distributors, supported through Quiksilver's global network with hundreds of Quiksilver stores in cities ranging from Moscow, to Park City, Utah to Paris, France. Launching this week in Park City, Utah, the film is opening the 2004 Sundance Film Festival as the first non-fiction feature in festival history to serve as the festival's opening film.

"Riding Giants," a non-fiction feature film about the pioneers of big wave and "tow-in" surfing, showcases some of the world's most famous surfers, including Greg Noll, Jeff Clark and Laird Hamilton. The film is produced by Forever Films, Studio Canal, and AOP and directed and written by acclaimed filmmaker Stacy Peralta, whose award-winning "Dogtown and Z-Boys" was a hit at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Executive produced by Hamilton, Franck Marty and Nathalie Delest; and produced by Agi Orsi, Jane Kachmer and Stacy Peralta, "Riding Giants" charts the evolution of big wave surfing, from the North Shore of Oahu to Northern California's Mavericks to today's tow-in surfing in Maui.

Rock Stars clamor to be in car promotion calendar - Chevrolet/'Rolling Stone' Advertainment Project Is a Hit

In 2002 when General Motors Corp. and Rolling Stone magazine worked to pair music stars and Chevrolet vehicles in photos for a 2003 promotional calendar, they had trouble cajoling recording artists to be part of such an advertainment project.
But a year later, as the companies put together the 2004 version of the co-branded calendar, it was a very different story in what was becoming a very different music and marketing business. "We had the record labels calling us trying to get their bands in," said Rolling Stone's publisher, Rob Gregory

Read the article: www.adage.com

10 who made a mark on marketing

From the FCC Chairman and Alex Bogusky to Carson Kressley and Yao Ming

Read the article: www.adage.com

Top 10 trends: Ad infinitum - Madison Avenue is waking up to the limitless new opportunities in digital media.

While digital technology continues to rock the music and film industries, major players in the advertising world are paying close attention and smartening up.

Advertisers are devising innovative ways to target messages to specific audiences by embracing, rather than fleeing, new technologies. They are particularly keen, for instance, on understanding the role of commercial-skipping digital video recorders (DVRs) like TiVo, as well as the potential of placing ads on video games and throughout the Net.

Read the article: www.redherring.com

South West Airlines, Reality Show.

DALLAS (Reuters) - Reality TV is about to meet flight delays, singing flight attendants and passengers too large to squeeze between the armrests when a program on Southwest Airlines Inc. takes to the air on Monday.

Read the article: www.reuters.com