Archive for November 12th, 2007

The 3rd Annual Branded Content Forum will be held from Nov. 27-29 in West One, London. The annual event is the only one in the industry that gives the latest examples and techniques for making branded content successful and commercially viable. The Forum will cover brand awareness, the evolution of branded entertainment, and will explore the best methods for commanding consumers’ attention and creating an emotional connection between the audience and the brand.

Industry leaders and innovators, including iTVX’s CEO Frank Zazza, will be on hand to share their expertise and opinions during the course of the extensive two-day conference. In addition to Zazza, speakers also include Alan Flack, strategic brand manager for IBM UK; Jules Robinson, vice president (adsales) Discovey Networks Europe, Dorian Leroy, primary brand communications manager for Land Rover Global Marketing, and Ros Shaw, head of branded content for CNBC.

For additional information on the event or to register to become a sponsor, email enquiries@centaur.co.uk or go to www.brandedcontentforum.com.

Stay tuned on iTVX.net for additional info, and stay tuned for our next installment of very soon…

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GOOGLE IS IN TALKS WITH “American Idol” creator Simon Fuller, according to a report in U.K. paper The Guardian. The newspaper says that the search giant and Fuller are discussing a collaboration that “could change the way TV is watched over the Internet.”

Details remain a mystery, but the Guardian’s sources are making sweeping pronouncements about its scope. One told the newspaper, “It’s a big idea on a global scale,” and, “It will change television in much the way iTunes changed the way music is disseminated.”

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AS AN ADVERTISER OF DIGITAL media, don’t you want your ads to have the right messages at the right time in the right places? It’s a fundamental media objective. Well, currently the only thing we have much control over is creating the right message. I’d add the right format to that. We can typically design the right ad unit sizes from the onset of a campaign. However, with today’s media landscape constantly sliding, we often have no control over the right time and the right place. I know this might seem hard to believe or even alarming to some of you. Think about it for a moment, would you? When you or someone on your team creates a media plan, s/he spends a lot of time and energy focusing on where such messages should be seen. That’s a given, right? Proper site selection is challenging enough. Deciding where on the site you ads will appear is a real challenge. When you lock up a buy, are you guaranteed a specific location for the placement of your ads?

Look closer, and the answer is probably no. Sure we can buy fixed placements that some call anchor tenants — opportunities where our ads are fixed in a spot on the site in a given time. However it’s rare to find inventory availability to make such a buy.

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The 30-second spot isn’t dead yet, but it’s taken a turn for the worse.

As marketers continue to embrace unmeasured media and funnel fewer dollars toward TV-production budgets, 2007 will go down as the year the 30-second spot’s health took a noticeable downturn. Faced with ever-more-powerful procurement departments, clients clamoring for return on investment and a general consumer movement toward interactive ad environments, agencies can no longer cavalierly bill multimillion-dollar commercial extravaganzas to clients as in years’ past.

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Are marketers going too far?

Everywhere I turned on the weekend there was another story about ads. Google announced it’s testing the best way to deliver ads in the middle of computer games and Facebook finally unveiled its plans to turn its 50 million users into a pack of viral marketers.

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NEW YORK AT&T is trying its hand at custom T-shirt sales with the digital extension of its “Where do you live?” campaign for its wireless service.

The company has linked up with online custom-product generator Zazzle for an Atmosphere BBDO-created Web site that invites visitors to construct their own make-believe, mash-up localities. This approach follows the theme of AT&T’s Wes Anderson-directed TV spots in which characters call to and from various made-up places. The spots include locations like “Philawarepragicago” and “Virgicalimentoflagantonio.”

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Bavaria Film Intl. has scored multiterritory sales on its entire AFM slate.”The Tracey Fragments,” directed by Canadian helmer Bruce McDonald, sold to Atlantik in an all-rights deal for Scandinavia following its acquisition in Toronto by Soda Pictures for the U.K.

Milcho Manchevski’s Macedonian drama “Shadows” (Senki) went to Blanco y Travieso in Venezuela, Cine Colombia in Colombia and Filma in Turkey in all-rights deals, while HBO secured pay TV rights for Latin America.

HBO also took the same rights to Joseph Cedar’s “Beaufort” (Israel’s Academy Awards submission), Erik Richter Strand’s Norwegian drama “Sons,” Dror Shaul’s Israeli kibbutz drama “Sweet Mud” and Didi Danquart’s Bucharest-set dark comedy “Offset,” which also went to Romania’s Prorom Media Trade.

Arrow Films nabbed U.K. rights to Jiri Menzel’s Czech Oscar hopeful “I Served the King of England.” Two feature debuts, Tamar den Dop’s Dutch love story “Blind” and Felix Randau’s German drama “The Calling Game,” sold to Blanco y Travieso (Venezuela), with “The Calling Game” also going to Cine Colombia.

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I’m currently in the development phase of a music video with a friend of mine and while brainstorming our approach, we looked to mainstream hip-hop videos for inspiration. While surfing YouTube, we came across the video for Fergie’s Fergalicious single.

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Viewers have long talked back to their TVs. If new technology NBC Universal is trying out takes hold, those viewers might actually be heard.

In March 2008, NBCU’s Bravo expects to test onscreen an L-shaped space — known as an “L-Bar” — during a showing of Bravo’s “A-List” awards. The graphical overlay will appear at the borders of the program, causing the show to shrink to 80% of the screen when that new space appears. Viewers will see messages and information, such as commentary on the proceedings or calls to vote via text message — not to mention an advertiser logo in the lower left-hand corner. And the L-Bar could also be used to spur activity during commercial breaks.

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This week’s number one film American Gangster featured New York’s Harlem in the early 1970s. Old school Cadillacs and Lincolns fill the background. While Ford comfortably holds on to its number one spot on our brandcameo ranking, the only Ford we spotted was a Ford Mustang owned by one of the crooked cops.

Next week, Santa’s brother is coming to town to get the holiday film season on the way. Will Santa’s elves be building branded toys this year? We’ll find out.
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