Archive for August 11th, 2008

Historically, TV and print news outlets have offered limited opportunities for advertisers, at least compared to their entertainment brethren. Recently, however, companies including The New York Times Media Group, the BBC, CNN and MSNBC.com have come up with some innovative digital options.

Shoba Purushothaman, CEO and co-founder of The Newsmarket, a Web-based video marketing and distribution platform, said it’s encouraging that the news industry is recognizing it can’t simply take traditional ad models and apply them to digital platforms. “It’s not about slapping it on the Web and saying it’s going to work,” said Purushothaman.

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iTVX Trivia Question of the Week:


Last Week’s Trivia answer: Will Ferrell wears a Mountain Dew T-shirt in “Step Brothers.”

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American sports fans are turning to the Web to follow the 2008 Summer Olympics in droves, setting as many records as have the Olympic swimmers over the first four days of the Beijing games, according to figures compiled by Nielsen Online and NBC Universal.

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And thousands of Heroes fans around the world say “well, duh.”

Heroes creator Tim Kring admits that there might be a little bit too much going on in the show’s universe. At a NATPE LATV Festival panel discussion, Kring says that there might be so much content going online — and so many employees working on the online content — that it sort of takes away from the experience of the show and the storyline, especially if you have a creative team working online that really isn’t close to the team that works on the TV show. Sounds like he’s referring (strongly) to the much-maligned second season of the show.

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Chris Brown sure is taking care of his business this summer – the singer who recently inked a deal for his own dance-reality series and three picture deal with Screen Gems is also slated to unleash his own brand of caps for headwear and apparel maker New Era Cap.

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Timberland tries to score some reflected Olympic spirit with a new television spot asserting that not all athletic types dream of, or need, Olympic glory.

The spot, “Podium,” shows a man walking through the woods, jumping over trees, rocks and other obstacles as he moves along a trail. He dramatically splashes his face with water and hurdles fallen trees. As he approaches the summit of a mountain, onscreen text reads: “Everyone dreams of standing on a podium. This is yours.” The spot closes with a dramatic shot of the man atop the mountain.

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Get ready for a redesigned Tommy Hilfiger.

The once omnipresent all-American designer, who sold his company for $1.6 billion to investment firm Apax Partners in 2006, has kept a relatively low marketing profile in recent years, with a scaled-down retail presence and a more modest media budget (Tommy Hilfiger Corp. spent $23 million on measured media in 2007 vs. $37.3 million in 2004, his highest spending in the last five years). But now Mr. Hilfiger is looking to branded entertainment as an efficient way to extend his brand and still break some ground in the increasingly competitive fashion category.

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Take a look at the image here and you see proof of what we all knew: Google is not going to put its highfalutin ideals above the practical realities of its business.

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Right before the Police played their final song at last night’s (Aug. 7) Madison Square Garden in New York, something odd happened.

Lead singer Sting ran shirtless off stage and jumped into a barber’s chair. As seen on the giant video screens, two women dressed in black then began shaving his beard while a third manicured on his nails. The whole process took about two minutes, and after they finished he ran back onto the stage and closed the night with “Next To You”.

Turns out the women, and indeed the whole apparatus, were from John Allan, a men’s grooming club with locations in New York and Chicago. In addition, two John Allan products were also introduced to a large audience: Slick Water, a shaving cream that doesn’t require the use of water, and the 63 Series Razor.

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By letting viewers skip ads, that pesky DVR has already gnawed away at the system media conglomerates have used for decades to score billions of dollars in ad revenue. Now it’s primed to become a phenomenon on the order of a locust — with an ability to multiply rapidly and do even more significant damage.

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