Archive for August, 2007

As “Entourage” wrapped its fourth season Sunday with episode “The Cannes Kids,” creator and executive producer Doug Ellin said this season was the most complicated to write.

“People kind of want the so-simple plot of ‘The goal is to get X.’ And I think this year, people were a little unsure of what the actual goal was,” Mr. Ellin said during his weekly podcast with TelevisionWeek managing editor Melissa Grego.

That didn’t deflate most people’s enjoyment of the season, he said.

During the latest episode, the boys’ movie “Medellin” draws criticisms and boos from the Cannes crowd.

A partial inspiration for the plot, Mr. Ellin said, was Vincent Gallo’s movie “The Brown Bunny,” which critic Roger Ebert panned at Cannes, telling a TV crew it was the worst film in the history of the festival.

But after “Bunny” was recut, Mr. Ebert gave it a somewhat favorable review.

“There’s all sorts of possibilities (for “Medellin”), but the guys right now are in a pretty bad situation,” Mr. Ellin said.

As for Drama’s fling with Jacqueline, and whether she’ll be returning in season five, Mr. Ellin wasn’t specific, but said he makes mental notes in terms of continuity of the series.

“Everything on this show, at some point, comes back. So how it’ll play out, whether he has a long-term phone relationship with her or she actually comes here, I really don’t know yet.”

Mr. Ellin also talked about product placement in the series, saying placements are based on what he and fellow executive producer Stephen Levinson enjoy.

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NISSAN WILL PITCH ITS TITAN pickup truck and forthcoming Rogue crossover to college-football aficionados in truck country. And it will be official sponsor of the Southeastern Conference (SEC), which is–fortuitously–celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.

The Nashville-based U.S. sales arm of Nissan has inked a deal with Sports Illustrated to get its vehicles and branding in SI special issues and at multimedia events highlighting the greatest gridiron moments in SEC history.

Nissan will also be exclusive auto sponsor of the presentation events around the Heisman Trophy.

Specifics include Nissan’s exclusive sponsorship of a special Sports Illustrated collector’s edition celebrating SEC football. The SEC commemorative issue of Sports Illustrated will be a custom publication that will be distributed at stadiums, displayed at Nissan regional dealerships and promoted at pre-game and tailgating experiences. Nissan will also tout the brand and Titan on SI.com, where fans can vote for their all-time SEC team, find their favorite SEC Sports Illustrated covers, view legendary photos, and register to win a trip to the 2008 SEC Championship game.

Nissan will also have branded presence on theheismanvote.com, another virtual voting booth for fans.

Finally, Nissan gets both title sponsorship and vehicles in the SI SEC Tour Driven by Nissan, a six-market road show visiting game venues with memorabilia, multimedia and interactive content about the SEC, Nissan Titan and the new Rogue, among other things. That tour is via Atlanta-based Creative Presence Partners, Inc.

Steve Kerho, director, Media & Interactive Marketing for Nissan, says the company tied its college-football presence to the SEC because of the geographic footprint (especially where Titan is concerned), the demographic and the elbow room.

“There’s a high level of engagement and passion among SEC fans, and an exclusive automotive presence allows us to create an ‘ownable’ segment in college football, which is getting harder and harder to do,” he says. “This allows us to do cross-promotional extensions that enhance consumer experience, and it generates a variety of brand extensions with key properties and builds a platform to increase overall brand opinion and awareness.”

Says Jim Helberg, executive client communications director with Nissan’s media-buying agency, Omnicom’s New York-based OMD: “The SEC was selected because it represents the most rich tradition and rich history, and we haven’t covered it. I think the exclusivity is a large appeal. The region is very strong for Nissan. But we had a void in terms of the conference geography.”

He says the overarching platform is college football, from which the SI deal and the Heisman Trophy sponsorship springs. “What we are doing this year is taking that larger platform, and putting that into multiple channels. The Heisman is the culmination of the college football season prior to championship series.” Nissan in-book components in SI will include gatefold ads bracketing editorial in the SI College Football issue.

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When a band plays a song during a show, and the same band plays the same number during the next commercial break, it’s probably not a coincidence.

More and more advertisers are looking to integrate their brand messages directly into programming as digital video recorders make commercial-skipping easier, and networks are looking for ways to accommodate them.

So it is interesting but not surprising that viewers watching last week’s episode of ABC Family’s “Greek” saw the band Dollyrots perform its song “Because I’m Awesome” at a student hangout, then caught an instant replay in a Kohl’s commercial as part of a multiplatform ad buy estimated at just under $1 million.

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LIGHTS, CAMERA, AND ACTION! SHOT on a video camera phone. Motorola plans to throw the weight of its brand behind a digital short film competition at the Toronto International Film Festival taking place from Sept. 6 through Sept. 16.

Motorola will sponsor: the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival Talent Lab MotoFilm project for emerging Filmmakers; Motorola Trailers, a 30-second trailer filmed on Motorola handsets that runs at the start of select movies; and the Motorola/MTV “For The Reel” short film competition aimed at youth. TV and Web ads in Canada promote the Motorola and MTV partnership, highlighting the fact that Motorola phones offer video and music capabilities, as well as Web access.

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EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Aug. 22 — The alarm bell went off for Mattel just as it was preparing to announce that it would recall 1.5 million Chinese-made toys tainted with lead paint.

Surrounded by boxes of Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels cars and other sample toys, Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel’s executive vice president for worldwide operations, was leading a tense early morning trans-Pacific telephone conference with his team in Hong Kong, where it was 9 p.m. At the time, recalled Mr. Debrowski, Mattel thought it was dealing with at most “a single failure, from a single vendor who made a big mistake.”

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THERE WAS a time not so long ago that the average television commercial was 60 seconds long. The norm has been 30 seconds for the past number of years, but with consumers’ increasingly short attention spans, and a growing number of media distractions, some advertisers have been producing 20-second offerings and toying with the idea of 10-second spots.

So is the 30-second TV spot dead? Will television advertising become little more than billboard-style advertising on the little screen?

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COORS LIGHT, OFFICIAL BEER SPONSOR of the NFL, is kicking off the professional football season with the return of its Silver Ticket program and new executions of its “press conference” campaign, featuring former coaches Bill Parcells and Dennis Green.

The season officially begins Sept. 6. Read the rest of this entry »

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Brand Placement will replace product placement as the next big thing in brand communication due to the dramatically decreased effectiveness of traditional advertisements and branding’s own innate advantages. By distinguishing brand placement from product placement, analyzing the reasons that lead brand placement to playing a significant role in media, and by presenting data detailing the successes of brand placement, this article will demonstrate that brand placement is the next big thing.

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Social-networking Web site Facebook Inc. is quietly working on a new advertising system that would let marketers target users with ads based on the massive amounts of information people reveal on the site about themselves.

Eventually, it hopes to refine the system to allow it to predict what products and services users might be interested in even before they have specifically mentioned an area.

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IF ONE PITCHES CATEGORY-EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY ownership to marketers, they are likely to imagine real estate of the electronic variety: sole category sponsorship of a sports broadcast, maybe? Or how about a Ford-style “ownership” of a show like “24″?

If Clear Channel Branded Cities’ idea becomes the new platform for urban advertising and grassroots marketing, property “ownership” may mean property–the real kind. The first example of the strategy will open for business this fall.

Westgate City Center, developed by The Ellman Companies, is an $850 million development on 223 acres near Glendale, Arizona. In addition to work, commerce and recreational projects bundled together, the city will include 2,200 condos, and is located near two major sports venues. David Groff, president of Westgate Entertainment and Sports, says the city projects 22 million visitors annually for cultural, commerce and sports events.

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