Archive for January 3rd, 2008

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — In a sign of the emerging power of TV outside the home, NBC Universal will hold what media buyers are likening to an “upfront” presentation for its digital out-of-home assets Jan. 16. The media company is hoping to get more advertisers to consider NBC for placing ads on TV screens in supermarkets, near gas-station pumps, in taxi cabs and arenas, among other places. Set to be held in Studio 8H, the NBC presentation will address approximately 200 advertisers and media buyers.

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Some top movie screenwriters are planning a secret meeting this weekend to form a coalition that would force the Writers Guild of America to accept the same deal that the Directors Guild of America negotiates with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, L.A. Weekly columnist Nikki Finke reported on her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog. The screenwriters, Finke said, “are weighing their options about how to convey their unified message and best exert pressure for this strike to be settled.” However, an unnamed member of the WGA board responded in a statement to Finke: “Anyone, A-list writers or not, who would posture in public, in advance of a DGA deal, as willing to take the DGA deal before they even make it… who as DGA members would compromise the DGA’s leverage by announcing this before hand… has awarded themselves the Darwin Award for the world’s weakest negotiators.” Meanwhile, the New York Observer has designated Finke “The Media Mensch of the Year” for her reporting on the strike. “She’s demonstrated that one determined reporter — with none of the support or backing of a media outfit, but also none of the entangling alliances — can, in fact, beat the big guys at their own game,” the Observer said. “She’s broken the news of almost all of the significant strike developments since the beginning.”

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Your ad here? Do you want a sure bet or people drawn to spectacle? For the traditional crowd, CBS’s offerings seem more reliable. They are formulaic, sure, but that can also be comforting. They are likely to draw in the usual late-night audience. In this early going, NBC’s late-night offerings could bring in a few gawkers who would normally be under the covers with their eyes closed. Either way, with a tight ad market on network TV, the return of original late-night programming ought to be welcome by marketers of all stripes.

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In case you haven’t seen this movie yet (don’t - it’s pretty bad) here’s a clip of product placement. Between this movie and “Transformers,” Shia Lebouf is the unofficial undisputed product placement king.

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LONDON — Sarajevo will become one large citywide movie location in the spring following the launch of a film talent initiative.The Sarajevo City of Film initiative — backed by the federal Bosnia and Herzegovina government and the Balkan state’s cultural ministry — will enable participants in the debut talent campus at the 14th Sarajevo Film Festival to make low-budget features, documentaries and animation projects related to the city of Sarajevo.

The program, formally launched Dec. 24, is open to the young filmmakers who will take part in the festival’s talent campus, which is being organized with the assistance of the Berlin Film Festival.

Grants will be made to four teams made up of three core members — a producer, director and actor — from at least two countries. The resulting project will be screened during August’s Sarajevo fest.

The new award “will encourage the collaboration of young artists whose work is the future of this region’s cinema,” the Sarajevo film festival said in a statement. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 1.

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Industry insiders say the country’s ad landscape will see more “integration and people-oriented niche campaigns” in the digital age.

“This is the age of online communities, messengers, blogs and searches. The growth of the internet, coupled by the logic that 75 per cent of the Indian population is below the age of 35 is bound to change the consumption pattern,” Nirvik Singh, president, South Asia, Grey Worldwide, a global advertising group, told IANS.

“Advertising agencies will have to invest in developing core competencies to play an even role in this landscape.”

The company’s special wing, G2 Direct and Digital, has been working with clients across many of these niche segments. The trick, says the ad whizkid, is to think digital and execute.

“And we at G2 have an edge over other specialised digital outfits because we are able to relate to brands and provide communications solutions,” he says.

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If you were a child of the 1980s, or are just a fan of very-late-night cable television, then you’ve most likely seen Michael Knight (played by a pre-Baywatch David Hasselhoff) and his chatty supercar sidekick, KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand), do battle with bad guys on the small-screen action-adventure show Knight Rider.

At first glance, KITT appeared to be a sporty 1982 Pontiac Trans Am, fresh off the assembly line. But thanks to a little Hollywood razzle-dazzle, the car transformed into a virtually indestructible machine—possessed with advanced artificial intelligence that allowed it to accept voice control commands, interact with “The Hoff” and make decisions on its own. In fact, the car’s AI was so advanced that KITT formed a kind of personality, which is what has endeared the “car” to millions of auto geeks in a way the Batmobile never could be. But when the show was shelved in 1986, so was KITT.

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So what did the Writers Guild of America get from Worldwide Pants anyway? Apparently nothing from TV advertisers, which is the only bit of good news for marketers.

From what we know, Worldwide Pants says its pays its writers’ residuals directly — and that includes the Internet.

But here’s what CBS said, in a statement: “CBS controls the Internet exploitation rights for both programs, and will comply with any eventual negotiated agreement between the AMPTP and the WGA.”

What was the exact formula of those Internet streams? According to Worldwide Pants, producer of “Late Show with David Letterman,” the company agreed to almost exactly what the WGA originally proposed back on December 7.

That would seem to be a residual for Internet streaming of full-length episodes, based on a percentage of the existing broadcast minimum, to be paid again after every 100,000 views of an episode. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers’ most recent proposal offered a percentage-based residual for a year’s worth of Web streaming that worked out to about $250 for an hour-long episode.

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…The context – an actor modeling a nice outfit on the cover of a trend-setting magazine read by many young men – makes a big difference. Smoking would be less shocking in an environmental portrait, an archival image, or on the cover of, say, Cigar Aficionado.This being a GQ cover, every piece of clothing is sourced and credited in the back of the magazine. I wondered if the cigarette was also a product placement.

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