BBH to develop new branded TV channel for Audi UK

LONDON - Bartle Bogle Hegarty is drawing up plans to develop a branded television channel for its flagship car client Audi UK.
The TV channel is likely to serve as a showcase of motoring programmes for the marque's range of models, although plans are at a very early stage.

Charlie Rudd, the deputy managing director of BBH, said: "Audi UK is committed to innovative ways of engaging with its audience and this is one example of how BBH is responding to this with solutions beyond traditional advertising."

Read the article: www.brandrepublic.com

dabs.com owner goes on TV

David Atherton, the founder of dabs.com, is launching his own interactive shopping channel on digital TV.

Technology TV goes live from 18 October on the Sky platform. The station claims an equal divide between editorial and interactive sales programmes. It hopes to tempt viewers looking to learn about new technology and generate revenue through direct sales to those viewers.

Andrew Milligan, managing director at Technology TV, told The Reg: "We're still finalising our retail partners. Dabs.com will provide computing products and we have best-of-breed internet retailers for the other areas - gaming, home entertainment and mobile phones.".

Retail partners will provide all logisiics and delivery services. They will also help push viewers to the channel by marketing it to their existing customers.

Milligan said: "We want to be informative and educational - to make Top Gear-style magazine shows."

Read the article: www.theregister.co.uk

A new play for the advertising dollar

When the executives at DaimlerChrysler AG's Jeep division wanted to promote an extra-rugged version of their Wrangler brand in the United States last year, they commissioned a video game that allowed players to drive a Wrangler Rubicon up steep inclines and across rivers. The game, Jeep 4x4: Trail Of Life, was relatively inexpensive to produce and the company gave it away online.

Within six months, 250,000US consumers had downloaded it and handed over their names and email addresses to Jeep. Nearly 40per cent of them said they were considering buying one of its vehicles.

Jeep says it has sold hundreds of the limited-edition, $US29,000 ($41,000) vehicles to people who played the game. Video games are so effective as advertising, "it's shocking", says Joel Schlader, Chrysler Group's senior specialist for interactive marketing and games.

Read the article: www.afr.com

Breaking the 30-Second Barrier

NEW YORK - The impending demise of the 30-second commercial has been a theme of numerous reports, articles, speeches and surveys ever since TiVo and other digital video recorders came to town and made it possible to easily fast-forward through the spots.

While some consumers would no doubt cheer in that event, marketers have devoted themselves to answering the challenge. At Initiative Media, an agency whose most recent compilation of its own work is called "Beyond the 30-Second Commercial," one primary strategy is integrating brands directly into entertainment programs, said Tim Spengler, executive vice president and director for national broadcast.

In another tactic, some marketers, like the BMW of North America division of BMW, are experimenting with "short films," also known as "long commercials," which run up to nearly nine minutes but appear solely online.

A third approach still uses program breaks on television to reach consumers by mixing up the format with commercials that are longer or shorter than 30 seconds.

Read the article: www.nytimes.com

TV ads under threat as ad-skipping technology unveiled

LONDON – Television advertising could be set to disappear in some arenas thanks to a new technology, dubbed the Intelligent Content Engine and unveiled today by inventor Peter Vogel in Sydney, which removes TV ads from digital set-top boxes and PVRs.

The technology, due to go on sale in November, will perform a number of enhanced functions. First and foremost is the Intelligent Content Engine's Ice Skip, which will be able to automatically skip ads when playing back a recorded programme on a PVR.

The technology also has the ability to control the volume level of ads, dubbed Ice Hush, or skip to another channel for the duration of the ad break in Ice Surf or simply blank the screen out when the ads are playing in Ice Ad.

At present, the system only works with free-to-air digital broadcasts and is still in need of an extra £2.3m before the first Ice-enabled set-top boxes can go on sale in the Australian market.

Read the article: www.brandrepublic.com

PVRs seen as ushering in radical change to advertising

LONDON - Advertisers are increasingly ready to move away from traditional advertising and embrace new technologies such as games consoles and personal video recorders, which they see bringing radical change to their advertising, according to new research.
Almost half of all marketers, 46%, said that they expected PVRs such as Sky+ to create "radical change" in the TV marketplace, with 60% believing that this technology will allow them to target consumers more accurately.

The research, 'The Living Room of the Future', conducted by OMD Snapshots, found that 46% saw PVRs as a means of tailoring their TV ads to suit the individual viewer and 21% believed PVRs will result in more "efficient" TV advertising.

Only 2% said that they thought that developments would mean the end of advertising, as we know it.

The vast majority of marketing directors, 93%, said that they were aware of PVR technology and 74% said they understood what the technology allowed customers to do, although almost a quarter (24%) said they were not sure and 2% admitted they did not know.

Among other technologies, 69% of marketers said that they had not heard of media-centre PCs that allow users to mix TV and computer content and almost a quarter of marketers, 24%, were unsure about what convergence meant.

Videogames were seen as a significant advertising medium by 64%. Other emerging technologies that have caught the eye of marketing bosses were: Bluetooth mobile technology (48%); 3G mobile phones carrying video and musical content (46%); wi-fi technology allowing wireless free connection to the internet (39%); and Blackberry handsets that mix PDA technology with a mobile phone (36%.)

Read the article: www.brandrepublic.com

Capitalising on digital TV

London needs a makeover, according to mayor Ken Livingstone, and he has enlisted brand maestro David Campbell and former Changing Rooms producer Claire Richmond to deliver it. Earlier this month the pair launched London TV on Sky Digital, making the capital the first city in the world to get its own TV channel. Broadcast from 3pm to 9pm from studios overlooking the Thames, the commercially-funded channel will be transmitted free-to-air on the Sky Digital platform 24 hours a day from September - access teething problems with Sky permitting.

Enteraction, the interactive television company which also produces Thomas Cook TV and Thomas Cook Broadband, is running and producing the £2m venture. The channel aims to promote the capital, giving visitors and residents a lively, experiential insider's guide to what's on, where to eat and where to stay. Deals to feature the channel on airlines including British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are being negotiated.

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

Massive Gains $5.5m Additional Funding

Officials from online developer Massive Incorporated have announced that the company has raised $5.5 million in additional funding in an oversubscribed series B financing round. The largest new financer was Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham, followed by RRE Ventures and existing investors Tobat Capital and Newlight Associates.

The additional funding will aid the company’s planned October launch of its dynamic video game advertising network, which aims to allow advertisers to serve dynamic real-time ads into games.

Read the article: www.gamasutra.com

BBC needs a funding plan B, says digital tsar

Barry Cox, the government's digital TV adviser, has urged the BBC to come up with a "plan B" alternative to the licence fee in case the growth of broadband and other digital media erodes traditional TV watching habits faster than expected.

A Channel 4 director and former boss of ITV company LWT, Mr Cox said the corporation could be left high and dry if watching TV on computers becomes a reality, because a licence fee is only required for viewing on a TV set.

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

Online Gaming Explosion Creates New Opportunities For Advertisers

In only a few years, online gaming has grown to an 800 million dollar industry, according to new Yankee Group figures. The nascent industry already commands 450 to 550 million in advertising dollars, and industry professionals seem to think that the online gaming market is now fertile ground for advertising growth.

"The Internet has created a whole new marketplace for gaming," notes Yankee Group Analyst Michael Goodman. He says that the types of game players have evolved just as the online game offerings have evolved.

The average online gamer is no longer an adolescent male. So-called casual games, for example, which are simple card or puzzle games, attract a predominantly female audience over the age of 45


Read the article: www.mediapost.com

Riding giants to Branded Entertainment success

In my world a pipeline is something wars are fought over, a smooth ride is what you get in a Lexus, and a break means getting to the news first. Despite a few bruising early-teen years spent on, and mainly off, a skateboard, I am embarrassingly ignorant of board culture. So don't think I'm coming over all "respect the ocean, dude" when I tell you to go see Riding Giants, the newly released documentary about big-wave surfing.

The film opened the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. It was directed by Stacey Peralta, who shot to fame with 2001 Sundance winner Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about a gang of California kids in the '70s who transformed skateboarding -- and youth culture. Riding Giants traces the evolution of big-wave surfing through the stories of three of the sport's they-must-be-insane pioneers, and in doing so explores the surfer ethos.

But what makes the film significant for marketers, even those who don't know one end of a board from another, is that it was partially funded by Quiksilver. The apparel giant has stumbled on a branding model that is based on offering the consumer entertainment rather than interruption. In other words, this is a billion dollar-plus marketer that can look at DVR growth - 36% of households by 2007, according to Forrester; 42.5%, according to Jupiter Media - and honestly say it is ready for this level of consumer control.

Riding Giants is the highest profile in a long line of Quiksilver-funded offerings. Films from the company's coffers over have included Josh Williams' Circle One, as well as Performers, Kelly Slater in Black and White and Mad Wax. Quiksilver has been involved with so many films that in June 2002 it created a unit dedicated to producing content, Quiksilver Entertainment.

Read the article: www.adage.com

Hot properties: 'musical real estate' on games

LOS ANGELES - When "Madden NFL 2005" hustles onto store shelves next month, video gamers won't just be playing their favorite football game; they'll also be listening to its soundtrack of 21 licensed tracks from emerging rock and hip-hop artists. And, if this year is anything like the last, almost 25% of Madden owners will buy or download one of those tracks because they heard it in the game, and 15% will buy or download an album because they enjoyed it while they were passing the pigskin.

Those are the kind of numbers that are music to the ears of record labels whose sales -- having been impacted by digital downloading -- slid 7.1% in terms of units last year from 2002, which was actually an improvement from the 8.9% drop in 2002 from 2001, according to the RIAA.

"In the media world, it's very hard to target advertising to the 12- to 24-year-old male demographic," says Lee Stimmel, senior vp of marketing at Epic Records. "We've found that introducing an artist as part of game play instead is a very, very impactful way to bring music to that demographic which buys music, goes to concerts -- and also happens to be the core gamer."

Read the article: www.hollywoodreporter.com

BMW set to launch branded TV channel to showcase cars

LONDON - BMW is working on a secret plan to launch a branded TV channel that will provide a range of motoring programmes to showcase its models.

The channel, expected to run on a digital platform, is understood to be in the early planning stages. The company received multiple industry plaudits for its online films, created by Fallon in the US, and the latest move is being interpreted as an extension of this creative media thinking.

Enteraction TV, the company behind Thomas Cook TV and the recently launched Visit London channel, London TV, is thought to be producing the channel, although the company refused to comment on the story. Simon Wells, the former head of TV at BMW's ad agency, WCRS, heads Enteraction's branded programming division.

WCRS is setting up a brand content division, Huge Entertainment, which is planned to launch in August and is thought to be working on the project with BMW. However, Stephen Woodford, WCRS's chief executive, denied all knowledge of the project.

Read the article: www.brandrepublic.com

Lights! Camera! Brand action!

If it's Madonna driving BMWs in films funded entirely by BMW that you're looking for, then it's your lucky decade.

The next 10 years will be marked by the rise of "branded content" whereby advertisers either create or distribute entertainment to woo consumers and create credibility.

That's the view, at least, from one of the founders of the London-based Branded Content Marketing Association, a new international body that is in discussions to set up in Australia in the next month.

Since BMW launched its series of free, short films in 2001 in which high-profile directors were given a budget and an open brief, as long as it featured a BMW car, bmwfilms.com has seen more than 70 million downloads.

It is exactly the sort of result American Express was looking for when it recently commissioned Jerry Seinfeld to produce a new mini-episode exclusively for AmEx's website.

Branded content is racing up the corporate interest charts and Claes Loberg, a founding member of the association and the chief executive of "branded entertainment" group Cocojambo in London, said Australia would be at the front of the global trend.

"BMW makes films, Coke sells music, Nike makes video games and Heinz creates TV," Mr Loberg said. "Branded entertainment is here and growing. I know over the past six years working between Australia, the US and the UK, Australia is going to be an interesting hub.

Read the article: www.smh.com.au

Films 'fuel online file-sharing'

File-sharing is booming, with people downloading millions of files despite efforts by the entertainment industry to stop the practice, say experts.

Films and other files larger than 100MB are becoming the most requested downloads on networks around the world, said UK net analysts CacheLogic. It measures peer-to-peer traffic on the networks of internet service providers. It estimates that at least 10 million people are logged on to a peer-to-peer (P2P) network at any time.

"Video has overtaken music," CacheLogic founder and chief technology officer Andrew Parker told BBC News Online. The firm has come up with its picture of file-sharing by inspecting activity deep in the network rather than just at the ports. It found that file-sharing is very much alive and well, despite claims from the music industry that it is declining.

Read the article: www.bbc.co.uk

Ofcom's draft broadcast code relaxes sponsorship rules

LONDON - Media regulator Ofcom has vowed to reduce rules governing television sponsorship to a minimum and give broadcasters greater freedom in this area in its draft broadcasting code.

The watchdog has published the draft code today, outlining new rules for safeguarding viewers under the age of 15, but at the same time promising a "less intrusive" regulatory approach for adult material.

In the section of the code dealing with sponsorship, Ofcom is proposing to cut a number of rules. This will include the lifting of the ban on TV news and current affairs presenters appearing in sponsored programmes that are scheduled next to new programmes and changes to the content of credits.

Ofcom is also proposing to lift some restrictions on the wording that can be used in describing the sponsor's relationship with the programme. This would allow broadcasters to use the line "brought to you by". However, it is maintaining the rule that all sponsorship must be transparent and that editorial integrity is paramount.

Read the article: www.brandrepublic.com

Big Brands Advocate Integrated Marketing Approach

wo of the biggest consumer packaged goods marketers urged agencies and marketers to deploy consumer-centric integrated marketing approaches, experiment with new media, and develop holistic marketing platforms that will enable them to execute a single idea across all media. Tim Kopp, section manager, Beauty Care Division, Procter & Gamble, told Ad:Tech-Chicago attendees that it doesn't take a big budget to test and experiment with emerging media including the Web, digital video recorders, and wireless.

Gaming, Kopp noted, is an area all marketers should look at, as Forrester projects that 110+ million people in the U.S. and Europe will be engaging in online gaming in 2005. Kopp said more women than men are into online gaming, which offers an effective way to target consumers. "You know where they play, what they play" and there's an opportunity to integrate brands into the gaming experience.

P&G teamed up with Electronic Arts to create a gaming tie-in for Old Spice Red Zone deodorant. EA's NCAA 2004 football game employed a "Red Zone" theme and leveraged the tagline "When performance matters most." The tie-in, which included online and TV advertising, had the "highest ROI of any marketing element in the past three years of Old Spice." Message association increased more than 200 percent, Kopp said, adding that holistic communication across media was key to the success of the program.

Read the article: www.mediapost.com

Global advertising is changing – Australia will play a key role

The Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA) has announced that it is opening an Australian chapter to ensure that Australian companies and talent play their part in the increasingly important branded entertainment industry. BMW makes films, Coke sells music, Nike makes video games and Heinz creates TV – branded entertainment is here and growing.

Branded entertainment, where advertisers create or distribute entertainment to communicate with their consumers, is increasingly popular with advertisers struggling with traditional advertising techniques in a fragmented media world.

The BCMA (UK) was launched in London in 2003, followed by the first foreign chapter in the US in 2004, to represent the interests of the key players in advertising and entertainment.

With members from the world’s largest communication groups - WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic - as well as leading producers, broadcasters and publishers, the BCMA provides a forum for advertisers, entertainment creators and distributors, agencies and regulators to shape the future of branded entertainment.

Claes Loberg, founding member of the BCMA, and Chairman and CEO of London-based, Branded Entertainment specialist Cocojambo will be in Australia in July meeting with the leading agencies and producers to establish the BCMA Australia.

As the founder of Australian professional services group Hyro (now ASX: HYO), Claes is leading the establishment of the BCMA Australia with his experience of Australia’s creative sector: “Having worked at the frontline of the Australian advertising and new media industries throughout the 90s, I have seen the impact that Australian talent has had in media around the world. Branded entertainment is the future and I want to see Australia punch its weight.”

For further information: www.thebcma.info

Frontier Heads Into Wild Blue Yonder

Frontier Airlines is introducing the Wild Blue Yonder network to offer advertisers a better platform to reach its passengers through print, television, entertainment content, the Internet and other media.

Based in Denver, Frontier flies to 45 markets nationwide and to destinations in Canada and Mexico. It also has a hub in Los Angeles.

This month, the airline casts aside the Frontier name for its magazine in favor of a new bimonthly title called Wild Blue Yonder. With a larger trim size and upgraded paper stock, the magazine gets a print run of 55,000 and an anticipated readership of 550,000 because of pass-through.

Another introduction is the Wild Blue Yonder TV channel, which will play onboard Frontier flights and in the Frontier lounge at Denver International Airport. Along with music videos, trivia and destination-specific information, the airline will run five 15-minute international films monthly.

"The short format features the ability for advertisers to air branded content. There are advertisers like Bentley who have produced four minutes' branded entertainment. We're one of the few places other than the Internet to have this digital format that can run what American Express calls Webisodes." said Mphasis chairman/CEO David Henry.


Read the article: www.dmnews.com

Europe’s first ‘Advergaming’ event

The Branded Content Marketing Association (BCMA) today announced that it is hosting Europe’s first ‘Advergaming’ event: ‘Advertising Through Games’.

Gathering together a panel of experts from the games and advertising industries, the event will explore:

- the impact that games are having on the consumption of other media
- the potential of games as advertising
- how games can be used by different industries

To be held on 20th July at The Century Club in London, UK, the event is being attended by BCMA members and other leading executives from the advertising and entertainment communities.

Read the article: www.thebcma.info

O2 develops texting Pac-Man game

LONDON - O2 is tapping the retro arcade games market with an online campaign to promote the mobile service provider's 500 free text package.

The ad, created by Agency Republic, is based on the game 'Pac-Man'. Players are challenged to give their "texting thumb" a work-out and guide a mobile phone around the maze, eating as many text messages as they can.

The game will be posted on a range of youth-oriented and e-commerce sites and will drive users to the O2 online shop.

Read the article: www.brandrepublic.com

TV Advertising Gets Healthy Prognosis

LOS ANGELES - Reversing a two-year trend in which ad expenditures lagged behind consumer spending, advertising outpaced end-user spending in 2003, said a PriceWaterhouseCoopers study, "Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2004-08."

Advertising worldwide grew at a 4.8 percent pace, compared to spending's 4.1 percent last year. "This is particularly impressive because the even years tend to spike because of regular events such as elections, Olympics and World Cup matches," said Pete Winkler, managing director of entertainment and media practice, PWC, New York. "We project television advertising to be quite healthy for the next five years."

Winkler said the industry is "still in the early days of advergaming," but that game ad sales should enjoy at 20 percent CAGR. "That will be driven by broadband and mobile technology," he said. "We see online gaming growing much faster than console gaming, even with console gaming growing at a 6.8 percent CAGR."

Read the article: www.adweek.com

Chris Schroeder's Digital Frontiers: Do gamers have something to teach marketers?

By Chris Schroeder
vice president, strategy, The Washington Post Co.

One of many surprises I had during a fascinating trip to Japan and Korea was how little new and innovative content uses there were considering how prevalent broadband is in both places. In a world of easily accessible download speeds from 20-100 mbps, I expected to be wowed.

In fact, many content developers over there first, and foremost think of the fat pipe as a way to distribute more efficiently that which we already know and love. I was told repeatedly, "Business models for broadband will all make sense when the movie and entertainment companies are comfortable distributing this way and fill up all that pipe."

So while most of the sites offer services and user experiences much like our own meager, sub-1 mbps world, there is one explosive exception: interactive games.

Much is being written about this whole phenomenon. Games in Asia are light years from the knock-'em out, video arcade stuff we focus more on in the U.S. They are, instead, highly sophisticated, collaborative experiences. Communities and relationships develop and the players evolve the rules over days, weeks, months and even years, like open source software developers. Broadband allows them to become extraordinary visual, interactive and relationship-building experiences. Powerful wireless capabilities allow players to check in on the progress of their games during the day.

Interactive games are, therefore, addictive. They are taking time away from where people of all ages, but especially males in their 20s and 30s, used to spend their time-especially television. They are, now, becoming mainstream in the U.S.

Once critical mass is reached, are marketing dollars better spent here, or in remote-controllable, PVR-able 30-second spots? Are "ad placements" more effective in a drive-by moment on a TV drama, or as part of an engaged, interactive experience in a game?

We are today in interactive gaming about the equivalent of television in 1951. Stay tuned!

Read the article: www.mediapost.com