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…Witness the marketing blitz around last summer’s mega-hit “High School Musical,” for which Wal-Mart, Hasbro, Honda and Dannon all got in front of the 17.1 million viewers who tuned in for the highest-rated entertainment program in cable history. The network is offering limited opportunities for advertisers to get in on the action with certain offerings again this year, chief among them June’s “Camp Rock,” billed as a potential new “High School Musical,” and “Princess Protection Program,” a new movie built around the familiar Disney theme of princesses, coming in the 2008-09 season. Target is already on board as a retail partner for “Camp Rock,” though Tricia Wilber, the network’s exec VP-ad sales, said the sales team will be talking to a select group of agencies and marketers over the next month to sell additional opportunities around the movie.
NEW YORK (Adage.com) — Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchases, according to new data from Publicis media network ZenithOptimedia.The data comes from ZenithOptimedia’s Touchpoints ROI Tracker, a comprehensive project comprising over 300,000 interviews across 34 countries and covering more than 4,000 brands in 126 product and service categories.
BERLIN — Teutonic distribs Bavaria Media Television and Telepool continue to ratchet up sales at this year’s Mip TV programming mart in Cannes following a slew of package deals to the U.S. and Europe.Bavaria inked a deal with U.S. web German Kino Plus for a bundle of crime series and TV movies, including titles such as hit drama “Scene of the Crime” (Tatort), “Lady Cop” and “Challenge in the Mountains,” featuring Austrian skier and pop singer Hansi Hinterseer.
Norwegian web TV 2 and Greek ERT acquired Spanish crime series “Genesis,” while Finland’s MTV 3 nabbed the first season of “Zoo Doctor.”
In addition, Austrian series “Vienna Crime Squad” sold to Italian pubcaster RAI, Viasat 3 in Hungary and Latvian TV.
In Norway, where German tyke fare enjoys great popularity, NRK Super picked up a package of feature films and TV movies, including Sandra Nettelbeck’s canine drama “Sergeant Pepper,” the two “Bibi Blocksberg” pics and “Amundsen, the Penguin.”
ZETA INTERACTIVE IS AT THE helm of an interactive campaign tied to the debut of the new MGM Grand at Foxwoods, a $700 million hotel-casino complex set to open this spring.
Adjacent to the Ledyard, Conn.-based Foxwoods Resort Casino, the new hybrid property will feature a 5,000-seat concert theater, a spa and nightclubs. Zeta will manage the digital campaign in its entirety, from the design and management of the Web site, to display ad creation and placement, to email, search and social media marketing.
HOLLYWOOD - Nicollette Sheridan’s days on Wisteria Lane are numbered–she’s set to leave Desperate Housewives. The actress, who recently laughed off reports she was to be axed from the hit series, will depart the show this season, according to creator Marc Cherry.
Your grenade has cleared a path. You reload your machine gun as you race forward, only to be assaulted by a billboard flacking Subway sandwiches. Television commercials have been disrupted by TiVo, and many young men are spending the prime-time hours on Xboxes and PS2s instead of watching TV. So advertisers are turning to games to reclaim that prized demographic.
In its first advertising expenditure forecasts of 2008, ZenithOptimedia downgraded its combined growth forecasts for North America and Western Europe this year from 4.4% to 3.8%, as consumer and business confidence is negatively impacted by current economic conditions. However, says the report, growth continues to strengthen elsewhere, and Zenith increased its 2008 forecasts for the rest of the world from 10.9% to 11.1%.
VIACOM’S NICKELODEON IS WORKING ON a number of new, branded virtual properties, including a world based on the “SpongeBob SquarePants” show and World of Neopia, an updated home for its Neopets franchise.
The properties will be developed by Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group Virtual Worlds Studios (a division that launched in mid-2007 as NeoStudios), and will build on the success of Nick’s existing virtual world sites like Nicktropolis.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — So how is it that NBC Universal and its cable network Bravo allowed one of their top-rated shows to defect to rival Lifetime?
According to a lawsuit filed yesterday in New York State Supreme Court, Harvey Weinstein, one of the reality show’s owners, was only going to let NBC and Bravo have “Project Runway” beyond this year if they agreed to pay for a bunch of other “second-tier” films they really didn’t want. And despite Mr. Weinstein’s promise to NBC Universal President-CEO Jeff Zucker that he would not embarrass him, it appears he has.
