Archive for June 10th, 2008

MGM Consumer Products is using its iconic Pink Panther as the backdrop of a new cause-marketing program to benefit the global breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

The firm is launching a new branding initiative, called Pinkitude, a fashion-inspired brand extension of the brand. The line will include a collection of apparel, jewelry and footwear, with plans to expands into the paper goods business. So far, the company has signed 22 licensees to support the program.

The brand extension encompasses “a passion for life with fun, fashion and an important message of empowerment regarding women’s health and well-being,” Travis Rutherford, executive vice president, MGM Consumer Products, said yesterday.

The partnership is designed to spread awareness about breast cancer and breast health, Hala Moddelmog, president and CEO, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, said.

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It’s still feuding with Google in court, but Viacom today announced a deal with YouTube friend Hulu.com. With the deal, full-length episodes of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and the “Colbert Report” will be available on Hulu.com, the fast-growing joint venture of NBC and News Corp. Comedy Central will get a portion of any ad revenue attached to the programs on Hulu.com.

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Warner Bros. Consumer Products has teamed up in an exclusive partnership with Safeway to launch the Eating Right Kids line of food and beverages, which will feature Warner Bros. animated Looney Tunes characters on the packaging.

The products, which are rolling out now in stores, will fully launch this year. More than 1,700 Safeway locations in the U.S. will carry the line, which includes Toasted Os cereal, frozen meals, such as chicken enchiladas, and beverages.

Eating Rights Kids, which is an extension of the Eating Rights adult line, is the first product line to feature entertainment characters and will be dedicated to a healthier eating philosophy, Warner Bros. said. Packaging will feature characters including Bugs Bunny, Tweety, Taz, Sylvester, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Marvin the Martian and Daffy Duck.

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The Hershey Co. is offering a Batman-themed motorcycle as the grand prize in a sweepstakes aimed at hyping the imminent return of the masked crusader to the big screen.

For Hershey’s “Find the Bat-Signal and Win” contest specially marked Reese’s and Kit Kat wrappers contain instant-win game pieces. The grand prize is a hand-built MV Agusta F4, valued at $35,000, painted black and sporting a Batman silhouette. Ten Joker Henchman masks and five home theater systems are also among the contest prizes.

Hershey is recasting its Reese’s cups in a bat shape, dyeing its Reese’s pieces black and blue and transforming its Kit Kats as Dark Knight bars with a Bat signal imprinted on them. The special edition products will be available this month in the run-up to the Warner Bros. theatrical release of “The Dark Knight” on July 18.

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NEW YORK Former Yahoo! chief sales officer Wenda Harris Millard gave a blunt assessment of the current state of her former employer: It is suffering from a case of Google envy.

In her view, Yahoo! has decided to chase Google in the search and direct response ad markets, abandoning its position of dominance in brand advertising programs that helped boost the company’s revenue from $720 million when she joined in 2001 to $6.4 billion by the time she departed a year ago.

“It’s a classic case of forgetting what you’re really good at,” she said in a talk with Federated Media Publishing founder John Battelle at the Conversational Marketing Conference here. “Business is about ‘and’ not an ‘or.’”
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By iTVX Staff

According to Variety, Sony Pictures Animation is making a feature-length film of 1980s cartoon legends The Smurfs. Initial chatter says the movie will be CGI in line with Alvin and the Chipmunks, but I’m hopeful it’ll still be 2D. Nobody needs to see three dimensional-Gargamel.  If it is a blend of live action, however, might I suggest John Lithgow as Gargamel. He’s a creepy dude isn’t he?

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I recently had the pleasure of speaking on the opening-night panel at Octane’s Southern California Digital Technology Forum (www.octaneoc.org). The focus of the forum was on investment in the digital media space and the audience was mostly investors and entrepreneurs. I find the difference in tone between the investor-focused digital media conferences and advertiser-focused digital conferences very interesting. Whereas advertiser-focused conferences revolve around the foregone conclusion of advertiser dollars migrating to the Web and the hundreds of technologies and properties that will make the migration possible, digital investment conferences are focused on figuring out what select few of the digital media plays will actually pan out from a business model perspective. The subject matter is surprisingly similar, but conversations end in very different places.

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Among wireless devices, smartphones account for 60% of the traffic to premium mobile sites, according to a new study by mobile ad network Quattro Wireless. BlackBerry devices made up 48% of all smartphone traffic on the Quattro network, followed by the iPhone, with 18%.

The company said the findings show that smartphones are no longer the province of only business travelers or other heavy-duty mobile users. Demand for devices with large screens and keyboards now cuts across most demographics, incomes and geographies, said Quattro.

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An actors strike this summer is looking more likely than ever after bosses of the two main unions turned on one another.

Actors are threatening walkouts at the end of June if talks between the unions and major film studios fail to resolve a dispute over pay and conditions.

But now a bitter feud has broken out between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), whose members appear in night time TV and film, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), with members including daytime TV stars and radio personalities.

The two unions’ executives severed ties back in March, with each organisation attempting to negotiate their own deal with film and TV studio chiefs.

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Fans of Stephen Colbert’s truthiness and and Jon Stewart’s mouthiness can now tune into Hulu for full-length episodes of the satirical news shows, thanks to a deal between Comedy Central and the online video site. The freshly inked deal plants the popular talk show hosts at an additional online viewing destination just in time for the 2008 elections.

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