Adrants reader John Brock points us to Snoop Dog's latest marketing venture: hot dogs. Yes, the one time Lee Iacocca sidekick has teamed with Platinum One Media and business partners Franco Petrucci and Jeff Earp to launch (oh, come on...do I have to tell you?) Snoop Dogs, a line of celebrity wieners. In a spark of enlightenment and wit, Snoop's brother and manager, Bing Worthington, told the Boston Herald the hot dog market was wide open for the taking saying, "There aren't any celebrity hot dogs out there. Who's the competition? Ball Park?" Well yes, there aren't any celebrity nails either but we're not sure we want MC Hammer to come out of retirement anytime soon and bring "Hammer Time" to the nail aisle at a nearby Home Depot.
While it's quite common for marketers to offer incentives to insure completion of a survey, the Hungarian office of PR firm Sawyer Miller has swept aside those less than motivating one dollar bill, Amazon coupon and free iTunes download offers for what really matters: a stripping hottie. Answer a question, off comes a piece of clothing. Get an answer wrong, no matter. Just keep clicking until you get the right answer and...off comes a piece of clothing. Of course, it's less of a survey and more of a presentation as there's only one correct answer to each question. Not that it matters but it has something to do with Hungarian economics. Have fun but turn the volume down if you're at work lest you want co-workers to think there's a lunchtime quickie rockin' your cube. Thanks, Rick.
Furthering its embrace (experiment?) of releasing television content online, CBS will produce original content of its hit drama CSI Miami and will show it exclusively on CBS.com. Promising to reveal a major secret about team of CSIs, the scene has local news reporter Erika Sykes (Amy Laughlin) share a piece of information with Detective Ryan Wolfe (Jonathan Togo) that, we're told, will lead to an undercover investigation that will unfold on the show this season. Way to tease, CBS. The bonus scene will appear online immediately following the east coast broadcast of CSI Miami, Monday, November 21.
The bonus material featured on CBS.com will be sponsored by GM's Hummer, featured heavily in the series. CBS and Hummer will promote the combined broadcast/online storyline with spots on the network and ads on CBS.com.
By now, it's widely known gaming, although far from fully tapped by marketers, is fast becoming a killer marketing app. More and more studies point to the medium pervasiveness among all age groups.
According to a soon to be released study of 4,000 adults and 1,000 teens conducted online for Jack Myers Media Business Report, 62 percent of all males and 47 percent of all females played video games either on consoles or online in the past week. Males spent an average of one hour and six minutes daily and females 42 minutes daily. Eighty percent of males 18-24 played video games in the past week as did 55 percent of females 18-24.
Among teens, 71.5 percent of all males and 47.7 percent of all females played video games either on consoles or online in the past week. Males spent an average of one hour and 54 minutes daily and females an average of 36 minutes daily.
Apple really does win the prize for undying brand love. Either that, or the religious freaks over at iBelieve have been converted to religion iPod and intend to convert all iPod owners to their cause. Actually, it's just for fun and the site says it's "inspired by the world's obsession and devotion to the iPod, iBelieve is a replacement lanyard for your Shuffle. It is a social commentary on the fastest growing religion in the world." To further this obsession, iBelieve is offering a lanyard for the iPod Nano that looks like a cross and sells for $12.95.
The Writer's Guild of America along with the Screen Actors Guild wants product placements to be disclosed at the beginning of television shows and movies as well as a cut of the fee paid for the product placement. The Writer's Guild, today, called for a code of conduct to govern product placement that would give actors, writers and directors more control over how a product is represented on TV or in a movie. It all points to even more interruption during TV shows as various disclaimers scroll by causing the TiVo button to get even more increased usage.
While out and about at favorite "preferred divey Chinatown karaoke bar, Winnies, Gawker spotted a bit of bathroom stall commentary on recently launched OK Magazine that, we're sure, the publisher won't be too happy to see.
OK, so the Paris Hilton video thing is so, so over but, amazingly, the thing is still for sale and, in this case, the ad, just to be clear to the two people in the world who haven't yet seen the video and might think this is some sort of new Paris Hilton in the flesh offering, is marked, "Paris Hilton Not Included."
"Advertising within TV shows is still the mother lode of how the networks bring in their revenue, and CBS and the other networks have an extremely important interest in protecting the sanctity of the first-run show's ratings," said Andy Donchin, executive vp and director of national broadcast at Carat. Andy might be eating those words in a few years as cable and broadcasters wake up and smell the VOD. Certainly, not everyone is going to pay for ad-free content but an entire generation who will refuse to accept current ad supported content models is fast growing and simply won't settle for business as usual. Additionally, if show producers and broadcasters see a viable and profitable pay per VOD business model, they'll dump advertisers faster than Cue Cat came and went.
In early October, we announced a New Zealand Telecom Mobile promotion which involved SMS, Battleship, and blowing up an actual battleship. Well, the ship has been blown up, 115,000 signed up to win the honor of blowing up the ship and 2.5 million text messages were sent.
The winner was 22 year old female student, Jo Smith, who, on Sunday 13th November 2005, pushed the button that sent the 3,000 ton frigate to the bottom of the sea where it starts its new life as New Zealand's newest dive wreck and home for marine life. Tens of thousands of spectators turned up on the shoreline and hills of South Wellington, and there were over 220 assorted water craft and vessels there to witness the event. The sinking had been delayed for 24 hours due to bad weather, but in the end it all went off perfectly and attracted significant media coverage for Wellington and for TouchCast (the promotion organizer) client, Telecom Mobile. View the explosion here.
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