Calling it a first, CBS has announced it will make the hit reality series Survivor available for download from its site for $1.99 per episode. The episodes will only be viewable for a 24 hour period after purchase and we're told CBS will use some sort of digital rights management to prevent a downloaded video from playing after the 24 hour period. While other networks and producers are selling episodes outright for the $1.99 price, CBS, by asking a person to buy something for $2 and then taking it back a day later, isn't quite what we had in mind for this new on-demand world we're in. They'll call it renting. We'll call it a rip off, We'll stick with our ad-skipping DVR and our big screen TV over the laptop and a slow download.
While we've seen food-engraving advertising before, Advertising For Peanuts points us to EggFusion, a company which hopes to etch millions of messages on millions of eggs for millions of advertisers for millions of dollars to reach millions of consumers. It won't be long before PETA does a roadblock buy and every egg in the country is emblazoned with "Murderer! Don't Eat This Egg!"
In a commercial created by Dallas-based TM, Fabio will foist his romance novel persona upon us for Nationwide Insurance, the company's first Super Bowl commercial. The ad, which looks like a shampoo commercial, is replete with romantic cheesiness with Fabio dressed as a gondolier in Venice and over the top imagery of blooming flowers and white horses...all to sell insurance.
We all know spending $2.5 million on a Super Bowl spot is, well, not always the wisest marketing move but thankfully, we've got experts who know how better to spend $2.5 million. iMediaConnection has gathered 28 marketing experts who give us a bit of insight as to what they might do had they $2.5 million to spend elsewhere. You'll love AOL EVP Michael Barnett's completely self-promotional "spend it all on AOL" approach to answering the question. But you'll seriously love Word of Mouth Marketing Association CEO Andy Sernovitz' suggestion that the $2.5 million be spent to train customer service reps to be helpful, polite and sincere. Amen.
Entertainment site Heavy.com, last night, released 16 banned Super Bowl commercials that were intended (or not) by marketers to appear in this or last year's Super Bowl. Heavy.com Founder and Co-CEO said his site compiled the 16 commercials from the Internet and did not make any agreements with the marketers to show the ads. Have fun but, no doubt, you've seen them all already.
With four days to go before Sunday's Super Bowl, this million dollar homepage idea has to be the dumbest one yet. The page, called Be in A Super Bowl Ad, promises to show six pages of its site for five seconds each during a :30 in the game. That is unless, according to this not insignificant disclaimer on the site, "Because advertisement space for the Big Game is extremely expensive there is a possibility that the football ad can't be purchased. There will be no refunds and the standard advertising terms and conditions will be in effect," things don't work out in the next few days. Can you say scam?
