Whether relating to movies, specials, or real-life dramas, the phrase “made for TV” may soon go the way of the Dodo. Online publishers and offline producers are increasingly turning their sites to the Web, and creating original content expressly for Internet users.
It was “announced”:http://media.aoltimewarner.com/media/newmedia/cb_press_view.cfm?release_num=55254527 this week that Katalyst Films — the production company headed by actor Ashton Kutcher that’s responsible for such shows as Punk’d and Beauty and the Geek — will be developing and producing at least five original comedy shows (comprised of about 20 “mini-episodes”) for AOL sometime this year. The Web-only programming will be available on AOL and AIM.
This isn’t the first incidence of programming being developed exclusively for the Internet. In November, for example, Food Network launched “Eat This with Dave Lieberman”:http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_et, a Web-only series hosted by the Food Network chef by the same name. In it, Lieberman visits various US cities to uncover and share food trends.
Month: February 2006
This whole “Gordon and Frank” thing is offering some really interesting insights into cross-channel marketing.
Not up-to-speed on the saga? Here’s a recap:
# Superbowl Sunday – See Bell Beaver ads tagged with “frankandgordon.ca”:http://www.frankandgordon.ca/ URL, wonder if they registered “gordonandfrank.ca”:http://www.gordonandfrank.ca/. They didn’t.
# Register the domain.
# Monday February 6th – write an “article for One Degree”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2006/02/06/gordonandfrankca explaining why Bell probably should have bought the alternate domain and point gordonandfrank.ca at it.
# Read “the Marketing Magazine article”:http://www.marketingmag.ca/magazine/current/the_work/article.jsp?content=20060206_74079_74079 _(sub. req.d)_ and realize this is a *huge* campaign that will go well beyond the Olympics.
# Wait for someone at “Bell”:http://www.bell.ca or “Cossette”:http://www.cossette.com to notice.
So, after one week, where were we:
* 6,618 pages served.
* 1,225 people clicked through to the real Bell site.
* 745 people got here by searching with words like Bell, Beavers, Frank, Gordon.
* “Bell Beavers” is the most common search term that gets people here.
* 34 people got here because of Norm MacDonald. A lot of them are angry.
* Then again, some people love the beavers so much they’re looking to buy Frank and Gordon plushies.
* The National Post’s Mark Evans “talks to”:http://evans.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/2/14/1761227.html “Frank and Gordon”.
* Still no word from Bell or Cossette.
Things we can learn from this exercise:
“Epsilon Interactive”:http://www.epsiloninteractive.com – “formerly”:http://www.alliancedatasystems.com/news/newsreleases/viewrelease,753949.html Bigfoot Interactive – has announced it is acquiring DoubleClick Email Solutions, the email business of DoubleClick Inc. “Here’s the press release.”:http://www.epsiloninteractive.com/eisite/pressroom/press_releases/pr2006/pr-02-14-06.htm
Epsilon, itself is a division of “Alliance Data Systems”:http://www.alliancedatasystems.com which owns Canada’s “Loyalty Group”:http://www.loyalty.com and their “AIR MILES”:http://www.airmiles.ca national coalition loyalty program.
So what does this all mean to Canadian marketers?