Archive for February 5th, 2008

The end of the high-definition disc war seems in sight, say industry observers, with major studio Warner Bros. jumping to the Blu-ray Disc camp and leaving the competing HD DVD format with a dwindling base of Hollywood support.

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LONDON — “Cloverfield” did solid biz at the European box office this weekend where Gallic live-action laffer “Asterix at the Olympic Games” was the most notable home turf debut.Local fare held top spot in Italy and Spain, where the second frames of “Scusa ma ti chiamo amore” and “Mortadelo & Filemon. Mission: Save the Planet” were victorious.

As awards season approaches climax, kudos contenders, including “No Country for Old Men,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Into the Wild,” held well and “Juno” delivered in its Spanish debut.

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Makes you just want to grab a Snapple doesn’t it?

The question is was she really singing.

The mobile ad space is percolating with interest from investors, and analysts are talking about explosive growth over the next three years. Yet few in the industry are pointing to real marketing results from mobile campaigns. That’s one reason a campaign created by Isobar for Adidas is striking. An internal branding study of its impact showed a 69 percent increase in intent to purchase Adidas products and 87.5 percent of people who interacted with the ads on their handheld devices. Skeptical execs told researchers to confirm the figures. They did.

The campaign (still running at www.adidasbasketball.com) is based on the concept Basketball is a Brotherhood, a team sport above all else. Targeting boys and girls aged 13 to 19, it features players such as Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan and Tracy McGrady touting virtues like “family,” “sacrifice,” and “we, not me.” Mobile viewers who click a text ad are sent to a specially built mobile website where they can choose from a handful of options, including a call to KG, tailored voicemail on their phones from the stars, specialized ringtones, and wallpaper. Five million mobile impressions drove 75,000 pageviews to the mobile site in the first week, and some 8,000 people opted in, providing their cell phone numbers. About 1,000 of those people clicked to call Garnett, and 18 percent of those called him again. The research also found that mobile outperformed all other media for driving opt-ins at a fraction of the cost. “It was very authentic. There was no overt advertising,” Gene Keenan, VP of Mobile Strategy for Isobar told JackMyers Media Business Report in an exclusive interview. “There was no push to buy.”

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Rerun fatigue setting in? Lack of star-studded TiVo-proof programming got you down?

CBS feels your pain, TV fans and advertisers.

The network, along with the non-profit Recording Academy, has launched a full-court press to promote the 50th anniversary of the Grammys and make it a sponsor-friendly event that leads to year-round partnerships. The Feb. 10 telecast will be one of the few high-profile awards shows to hit primetime this season, with the fate of the Academy Awards still up in the air.

Most of the advertising time has already been sold for the Grammys, which will not be picketed by the striking Writers Guild of America. Among the blue-chip lineup is McDonald’s, General Motors, L’Oreal Paris, Target, a number of Hollywood film studios, Apple and Procter & Gamble. The bulk of those marketers bought Grammy ad time in the CBS upfront last year. The network held back some scatter spots, and those are selling briskly, and at a higher rate than last year’s show.

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Get ready for more Jackie Moon pitches for Bud Light.

The improvisational endorsement from Will Ferrell’s character in New Line Cinema’s release of Semi Pro initially was intended to be an online short. But Anheuser-Busch executives decided to put the ad from DDB, New York and Chicago, on Fox’s Super Bowl telecast during the fourth quarter.

“We agreed with Will’s team a couple weeks ago and ourselves that it would be better for the Super Bowl because it’s an opportunity for a few more jokes; it was a great call,” said Bob Lachky, chief creative officer and evp—global industry development.

More Bud Light TV spots featuring Ferrell as the owner, player and coach for the Flint, Mich., Tropics basketball team will air on spot and national programming leading to the Feb. 29 debut of the film. The brand’s previous movie tie-in, Wedding Crashers, was released by New Line during 2005 and also starred Ferrell.

A-B’s ad featuring a Dalmatian as the personal trainer of a Clydesdale horse vying to make the Budweiser pull team was voted most popular Super Bowl ad on USA Today’s AdMeter.

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After a three-month lull, agents’ phones began ringing off the hook again Monday as word about an imminent end to the writers strike spread around Hollywood during the weekend.

The talks are still in the exploratory stage since the deal between the writers and the studios is still being finalized, but contingency plans put in place by the TV networks and studios will have existing series return on the air on average four weeks (for multicamera comedies) to six weeks (for dramas) after the official end of the strike.

How quickly each show can go back to production depends on the condition of the scripts started before the strike. The prep time needed is said to be two weeks for multicamera comedies and four weeks for more elaborate productions.

However, networks are not expected to ask every series to produce more episodes this season, which doesn’t necessarily mean that those shows will be automatically canceled.

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With the writers strike entering its fourth month today, the WGA has now scheduled a key step that may send the scribes back to work in the next few weeks.The WGA West has announced it will hold a general membership meeting to provide an update on the negotiations at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Shrine Auditorium south of downtown Los Angeles.

WGA leaders are expected to announce the details of a proposed contract with the majors at that point — and the reaction from members at the meeting should give guild toppers a strong indication of whether the deal will pass muster in a ratification vote.

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Showing why the issue of streaming and download revenue for television programs is so important to the WGA, this report details that online viewing of network primetime shows is up a staggering 18% over last year. That total now accounts for 43% of the total population, or nearly 80 million people. And of those 80 million, 20% say they watch online weekly. God knows I do. There’s only so much time at night when I’m at home, so it’s nice to be able to spend my lunch hour watching Prison Break or Brothers & Sisters online.

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