New York Times Columnist Stuart Elliott takes a look at a developing trend whereby advertisers are modelling their commercials after the tried and true game show format. Orbitz, Bank of New York, Cingular, FedEx and Old Navy are a few of the marketers who have glommed onto the trend. Orbitz has hired game show host oldtimer Wink Martindale, host of High Rollers and Tic Tac Dough three decades ago, to host a series of the company's game show style commercial.
ContagiousMedia, an organization that embraces consumer-created, contagious media, has launched a Showdown where prizes are offered for various categories including the creation of a site with the most unique visitors, the first site to reach an Alexa rating higher than 20,000, a Technorati prize for the site with the most links from blogs and a creative commons prize for the most popular site under an attribution ShareAlike license. Go at it all you creative types.
While the company might consider revising this number downward following GM's advertising exodus, the LA Time said, yesterday, it will launch a $10 million to boost its ailing circulation. The campaign, pointless in the face of steadily increased online newspaper readership, will include direct marketing, television, radio and, smartly, online. The paper's circ is down 5.6 percent and, rather than look to new areas for growth, the paper blamed recent telemarketing limitations for the decline. Perhaps we should just spell it out for the LA Times and for all other newspapers engaging in this losing battle:
NO ONE READS PRINTED NEWSPAPERS ANYMORE!
OK, so a few still do but wouldn't it make more sense for a company to embrace a growing medium as opposed to a declining one? That said, newspapers don't have to say goodbye to paper forever but they should concentrate on a business model with more promise such as custom published versions of the paper, based on a reader's interests, delivered online but, if desired, printable by the individual for those moments when it's not so cool to bring a laptop into the bathroom. Additionally, 70 percent of a newspaper's content is, likely, of no interest to an individual reader. It's senseless waste of time and effort to produce content no one will consume. Newspaper publishers should set their sights on delivering products where 100 percent of the content is of interest to the reader. Yes, much easier said that done but so was the notion of human flight.
More interesting that the usual run-of-the-mill taxi cab advertising, Taipei-based photographer Richy caught this image of Ronald McDonald's feet adorning a taxi. He also shot an image of this giant wallscape on which the likeness of Ronald McDonald has been placed to look as though he is climbing up the board. It reminds us of the Adidas board in Japan on which two players, hung from ropes, played ten minute soccer matches.
Teaming with U.K.-based mobile marketing company Flyxt, Time Inc. launched, on April 1, a text messaging campaign directed towards current and prospective People and Teen People magazines that provided news, polls, horoscopes and chat rooms. The campaign is expected to expand to other titles, including Time and Entertainment Weekly, this week and to Sports Illustrated in a few weeks.
Rather than simply pointing out this past weekend's amazing shot by Tiger Woods would make a great Nike ad, Joe Jaffe just went out and made the ad. Well, he added "Just do it." to the end of the footage but it certainly does make for a great ad. Does this mean that if Nike does make the shot into an ad, they have to pay Jaffe? Hmm.
Carat Interactive has launched a blogging practice for its clients which consists of a three step starter kit helping clients monitor blogs, advertise on blog and create blogs for themselves. Carat VP and Media Director John Cate hopes clients enter conversation marketing openly and attempt to glean valuable consumer feedback.
America Online and XM Satellite Radio, today, announced they will join forces to create a new online radio service. The service brings together XM and AOL Radio Network products and programming to form the combined digital radio network. The new co-branded service will include a web radio offering and an enhanced premier radio offering that will be available to AOL members at no additional charge and as a premium service to consumers on the web. The new offerings, which are expected to roll out beginning this summer with the launch of AOL's next generation AOL.com web portal, will be promoted online.
AOL and XM will co-promote their programs across their networks including to XM’s nearly 3.8 million subscribers and to AOL’s claimed 100 million unique monthly visitors across the AOL network of properties.
The new co-branded online radio service will feature selections from the AOL Radio Network and XM Radio such as AOL’s Radio KOL, AOL Music Sessions and AOL Music LIVE! and original XM programs such as Artist Confidential and Then…Again.. Live!. People will have the ability to select the offering that best meets their needs. The co-branded offerings will include:
Try as we might, we can't seem to envision the words "hot date" and "Wal-Mart" in the same sentence. But Bentonville, Arkansas Wal-Mart has been combining the two for over a year now with their Friday night date night during which those in search of a mate place red ribbons on their shopping carts that scream, "I'm a loser!"...we mean..."I'm available!" in order to mingle with other red ribboners. OK, so flirting in a store is all good but slapping a billboard on oneself announcing the intent just takes all the fun out of the game.
Spotted by Hiroshi-K, FOX 24 star Keifer Sutherland is hawking, CalorieMate, some sort of diet food Japander style. We know the culture's different and even high paid actors need more money but why do appearances by American stars in Japanese ads always seem so odd?
