Archive for November 5th, 2007

Here’s a pitch an agency like ours gets all the time from middlemen; we get them so often they not only sound the same, they are the same: “I am excited to announce that White Flower Entertainment will be working with Hyde Park Entertainment on their new feature film project, “Other End Of The Line.” Here’s a brand friendly project that is full of promotional, product placement and brand integration opportunities. One of the main settings takes place in an ad agency surrounded with slicks and light boxes, perfect for branding. (Think of the film, What Women Want.)

“As you are familiarizing yourself with this project please keep [your client] in mind, as I am specifically interested in discussing opportunities for this client with you amongst any other clients that you might find relevant.

“Logline: A beautiful young Indian woman and an American businessman cross cultural barriers in this uplifting romantic comedy. Priya Sethi works at a call center where she pretends to be American. She helps Granger Woodruff, who lives in the United States, with fraudulent charges on his credit card. What Granger doesn’t know is that Priya actually lives in India. Priya and Granger have an instant connection over the phone. Throwing caution to the wind and leaving her loving family behind, Priya agrees to meet Granger in San Francisco. Priya and Granger’s relationship blossoms, but their love is not without obstacles as family and cultures collide. Read the rest of this entry »

Share This

TOKYO — The NTV network began webcasting the first blog drama — a TV drama series whose story can be changed by fans contributing to the show’s blog, nationwide on Friday, the net announced.

Sponsored by electronic giant NEC, “Okinawa Otoko Nigeta” (My Guy Escaped to Okinawa) tells the story of a 33-year-old female office clerk whose photographer boyfriend suddenly leaves for Okinawa, a semi-tropical island south of the main Japanese archipelago. She pours out her feelings about this disappearance on her blog, which went up on the Internet on November 2. The blog will continue to appear, with video segments, until December. Then on December 5 and 19, the recorded shows will be broadcast on the NTV “Digital no Konjo” (Digital Spirit) terrestrial variety show. The completed episodes will also be beamed on the blog. Then starting on December 20 and continuing until December 31, “Another Ending,” a show that explores the options the heroine did not pursue in the first show, will be beamed on NTV’s Internet pay broadcasting service Nippon Television No. 2. Finally sponsor NEC will offer the show on its “one seg” mobile communications service.

Toshio Tsuchiya, NTV executive director, explained to the press on Friday that though viewers writing comments on the heroine’s blog can influence the course of the show, it will not be done by viewer vote. “If one comment can move her, her actions will reflect that comment, even if it is one person’s word against 99 others,” he explained.

Full Story

Share This

Strike Shuts Down TV

 Late-night talk shows are expected to feel the effects of the writers’ strike first, but the television business in general is likely to be harder hit than the movie business in coming months. According to trade reports, all of the network talk shows will go into rerun mode tonight, along with cable’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report which air on Comedy Central. (On Friday’s Daily Show, host Jon Stewart remarked, “While we’re not here, you can check out all of our content on our new website, TheDailyShow.com. Every Daily Show since I got here is on it, free.”) Most primetime shows are not expected to be affected for several months. Indeed, episodes of some series could be preempted by news specials and magazine shows, thereby extending their runs. NBC’s Dateline and ABC’s Primetime have not had a regular time slot since the beginning of the season, and several persons in the industry have expressed the belief the two networks have been stockpiling the relatively inexpensive news shows in anticipation of a strike. The networks have also reportedly been preparing to launch a number of reality series. “It could look like summer in winter,” Tim Spengler, chief ad buyer for the advertising agency Initiative told today’s (Monday) Los Angeles Times.

Full Story

Share This

AMIDST THE BIT TORRENTS OF digital plankton prognosticating the failure of the newly launched News Corp./NBC joint venture Hulu before the online video platform is even readily available, one can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something more significant here that we as an industry need to take note of: Old-media defenders can actually become new-media players once they wake up to the reality that liberating their content can actually, well — liberate them. To begin with, the platform is simple and refined. From a digital branding perspective, it’s a little on the sparse side, but the GUI (graphical user interface) is at once elegant, clean and open.

Full Story

Share This

Share This

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — NBC’s audience has embraced Dunder-Mifflin, the dysfunctional company from “The Office” where quirky workers flail about weekly. But is it ready for Miller Shanks?

NBC and Omnicom Group’s Full Circle Entertainment plan a comedic summer series based on “E,” the wickedly humorous Matt Beaumont novel that relies on a string of e-mail to tell the tale of a fictional London ad firm and its efforts to capture a vaunted Coca-Cola account.

Full Story

Share This

Hollywood’s film studios won’t be hitting the panic button anytime soon.For much of the past year, they have been prepping for a possible walkout, so the 2008 release slate should proceed as scheduled. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be headaches along the way.

The events of the past week mean that marketing of films will be thrown for a loop, and there are expected to be effects on the film biz that extend way past 2008.

In the short term, talks between the Writers Guild and producers have already created a changed atmosphere at the studios.

“It has become about cold, hard business,” said one high-level studio exec, “where everyone is going to look at all their commitments and eliminate the ones that aren’t necessary. Everyone will be reshuffling their businesses to make them run more efficiently, and it is going to happen fast and hard. That goes for studios and talent agencies.”

Executives at the majors collected scripts for high-profile projects that will lense next year and bow in 2009. And, before the Oct. 31 expiration of the WGA pact, they also swapped notes with scribes on these works.

In fact, 50 features are said to be in preparation for lensing in the coming months, with many still to be cast. That doesn’t include pics produced by specialty arms or finance entities funded by Wall Street dollars.

For 2008, most of the productions set to bow have already lensed or are gearing up to start production imminently. Next year’s slate also includes pics bumped from this year, including a slew of horror titles like “Trick ‘R Treat” and “The Eye.” And if release schedules still need augmenting, there are always potential pickups at Sundance in January.

Full Story

Share This

Diageo North America has formed an alliance with Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment founder Sean “Diddy” Combs under which the hip-hop artist and entertainment mogul will “take the lead on all brand management decisions” for Diageo’s luxury Cîroc vodka brand, according to the spirits giant. The new multi-year agreement also creates a 50/50 profit split between Diageo NA and Sean Combs Enterprises for Cîroc in the U.S.

Combs will oversee marketing, advertising, public relations, product placement and events initiatives for the brand, which retails for about $34 per 750-ml. Forthcoming campaigns will converge under Cîroc’s “Art of Celebration” umbrella, with an emphasis on responsible drinking forming a major component.

Full Story

Share This

Video ad targeting firm Digitalsmiths added two new products to its VideoSense service.

The new products are called AdSafe and AdIQ and they help marketers place their ads against appropriate online content.

AdSafe makes sure the ads run next to “brand-safe” video, while AdIQ enables what’s called “competitive brand targeting.” This means VideoSense can seek out rivals’ ads and generate competitive ad placements for its brands.

For instance, Coca-Cola could choose to target ads within sports video content and also specify that a Coca-Cola ad appear any time a competing brand is shown, Digitalsmiths said.

Full Story

Share This

NEW YORK - The first walkout by Hollywood writers in nearly 20 years got under way Monday with noisy pickets outside the “Today” show — a strike that threatens to disrupt everything from late-night talk shows to soap operas.

A giant, inflated rat was put on display Monday as about 40 people in Rockefeller Center shouted, “No contract, no shows!”

“The seven-word mantra is, `When you get paid, we get paid,’” said Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America East.

The strike is the first walkout by writers since 1988. That work stoppage lasted 22 weeks and cost the industry more than $500 million.

The “Today” show is not directly affected by the strike because news writers are part of a different union. The picket was set up behind police barricades in an area adjacent to the NBC studios, where shows like “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” might be forced to play re-runs.

Writers’ demands for a bigger slice of DVD profits and revenue from the distribution of films and TV shows over the Internet has been a key issue.

“They claim that the new media is still too new to structure a model for compensation,” said Jose Arroyo, a writer for “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.”

Full Story

Share This