As the world mourns the sudden loss of Michael Jackson, we assemble the panel for an emergency podcast session. Ben Peirce, Holly Cirillo, Brady Sadler and Mike Giovinelli offer up some cathartic conversation as they discuss, the media buzz and worldwide intrigue surrounding Jackson’s death, the enigma of his life and, of course, the influence and legacy of his music. It’s an emotional episode as four children of the eighties talk themselves through the shock of what may be the most impactful celebrity passing of their generation.
In part 2 of our new split show format, Holly gives us Player Played Up and Played Out and we debut a brand new segment, “Mike Stevens’ 30 Seconds of Rage”. This week, we talk about Motherlover and the rest of SNL’s Digital Shorts, try to make sense of the late night TV shuffle and complain about our 10 least-favorite reality stars. Ben tries to impress us with his celebrity sightings and Brady makes sure that everyone has enough street-cred to make it through the episode.
Why is it that every advertising professional in a movie or television show passes a newsstand on their ultra-cool walk to work? The answer, I have no idea, but perhaps Hollywood only understands the Madison Avenue lifestyle of advertising. The real answer is not that important to me but the next time you are walking to work in a movie or passing a newsstand take a second to view the magazine covers. A number of magazine publishers are allowing advertisers to place new and unique ads on their covers.
According to the American Society of Magazine Editors, ads on magazine covers violates a rule which requires a clear separation between editorial space and advertising space; however, the penalty is typically minimal. There are a number of magazine cover advertisements; some examples include, Us Weekly’s mock cover, promoting the HBO movie “Grey Gardens” or Esquire Magazine having a cover with a special pull-back tab for the new Discovery show Trapped but Popular Science this week has taken their cover to a whole new level. Popular Science, with the help of General Electric, has created the first-ever interactive 3-D cover.
Interactive print advertisements have been around for a number of years. Examples include scratch-and-sniff ads for Diet Pepsi, CBS used a taste stripe to promote a television show based on family of rum makers and Yellow Tail placed ads equipped with push button LED lights to promote one of their wine brands. Advertisers continue to search for unique ways for consumers to spend more time with their brands and interactive print ads are helping advertisers achieve just that.
When Popular Science decided to team up with GE, they did not decide to change the advertiser for the cover and viewed GE as much more of a content provider. The cover, which features a number of wind turbines, has a call-out on it asking consumers to hold it up to a Web cam in order to see the interactive 3-D action. When a consumer holds up the magazine to a Webcam, it signals the computer to display flash-based imagery making it look like the turbines are moving. To check out how the cover works watch this YouTube video. If you have a web cam and want to see how the advertisement works for yourself, you can print out a copy of the advertisements at a dedicated microsite at www.popsci.com/imagination. When viewing the microsite for GE and Popular Science stop over and check out the GE microsite located here, the site is pretty unique and interactive and it discusses their latest Smart Grid technology.
In general, this is a pretty creative and unique way for Popular Science and GE to attract more consumer attention. Not only does the interactive advertisement help create a buzz for the magazine but it helps drive traffic to the GE microsite. The partnership between the magazine and the content provider (in this case GE) is a well-thought through technique that stretches multiple mediums. Interactive print advertisements can be a very successful technique especially if they are part of an integrated marketing campaign that uses multiple mediumsand gets the consumer to do what you want. Overall, I think Popular Science and GE have created a campaign set up for success.
Outdoor advertising is a medium that continues to expand the ways in which technology is integrated and utilized. Over the past couple of years, billboards have grown in both size and digital capabilities and now CBS Outdoor is launching a new service to offer clients a way to increase their outdoor brand experience. The service is called Txt2Go, and it allows CBS Outdoor advertisers the opportunity to include a text keyword in outdoor displays. Consumers who view the special text keyword can SMS it back to the advertiser via their mobile phone to take advantage of any additional content advertisers wants to communicate.
Because you demanded it! This episode marks the first of our new weekly format which will give you a shorter, more easily-digestible show every week, alternating between Check it Out and Player/Played-Up/Played-Out episodes. Check it out gets the nod this week as Ben and Mike G. reminisce about the weekend of concerts at Fenway Park and the triumphant return of Phish.
Then, Adam from New York writes in with our second topic, TED Talks. You’ll hear from J.J. Abrams, creator of Lost and the new Star Trek as we dive into TED. Check back next week for Player/Played-Up/Played-Out.
It seems like everywhere you look someone is talking about Twitter. In case you don’t know what Twitter is, Wikipedia defines it as a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other user’s updates (known as tweets). Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Click here for more on Twitter.
