NATPE 2010: Brands and Fans Online and On Mobile
Las Vegas, NV—NATPE–the National Association of TV Programming Executives–opens today, with 
a full afternoon schedule of panels devoted to mobile technology and content. MobilizedTV covered a panel on “Fans & Brands: Case Studies in Co-Creation and Connectivity,” sponsored by ITA (the Interactive TV Alliance), moderated by ITA CEO Allison Dollar, featured Steve Amato, partner at Omelet; Laurel Bernard, SVP of marketing at FOX Broadcasting Company; Arthur Chan, EVP Palisades Interactive, Palisades MediaGroup; Oren Katzeff, VP/GM Demand Media Entertainment; Jesse Redniss, SVP, digital media, USA Networks; and Van Vandergrift, founder/executive producer of matrixx.
Laurel Bernard
Bernard spoke about FOX’s work on Glee, which she called a show that transformed the process they ordinarily go through. “We knew it was important to get this show off the ground with ambassadors to take it forward,” she said. “We don’t call them fans, we call them gleeks.” We made a unique move and put the pilot episode of the show on after American Idol, knowing they wouldn’t have any more episodes until the Fall.” In between that debut and the Fall launch, they took some of the Glee cast members on the road, and enlisted people to
follow the show on Twitter and now have over 100,000 followers. The show was also the most twittered show on TV this season. Facebook is another point of contact for the show. They posted videos of the Gleek tour on the site. “We’ve been video-diarying the cast since we’ve had them,” she said. The also send information and access to other leading fan sites. iTunes has the initial release for the songs; 50 have been released this way. “That’s been part of the big viralness of the show,” she said. Show sponsors they’ve worked with include General Motors and Glee gum. They’ve had a lot of proposals for a mobile application,says Bernard. “The studio is looking at many possibilities,” she said. “There’s a wide variety of ways we could create an app, with such functionality as singing into the phone. But [what happens with mobile] is really up to the studio.”
Palisades MediaGroup talked about a couple of movies: Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Men Who Stare at Goats. Chan spoke about the challenges of marketing Zack and Miri online. “How do we play on the idea of making a porno and having the audience participate without making a porno,” he said. They made a Photoshop contest, something they do on Cracked.com every week. This contest was to come up with the worst porno title ever.
“Audience isn’t community,” said Chan. “Your audience is smart. If something looks like an ad, you can’t make them think it’s purely original content. Also, just because something matches doesn’t mean it goes. The audience can see right through it if it isn’t real.”
Their marketing work on Men Who Stare at Goats took more advantage of Facebook and Twitter, with an exclusive trailer that they also released on mobile. “We’re making this a 360 experience now,” he says. “But it’s not a review of the movie or something so blatant.” Among their partners in this marketing campaign was Sprint Mobile.
Steve Amato, partner at Omelet, described his company as a full-service advertising entertainment company. He defined what a fan is: a core audience, a target demo, a community. “At the end of the day, fans equal money,” he said. “You deliver fans, you’re delivering money.” But it’s more challenging to deliver fans, he said, because the power has shifted to the fans. “They are everywhere, watching everything, created by anyone, on their terms,” he said.”Visibility alone doesn’t sell product or drive fans to action.” Omelet has done a lot of experimentation with solutions.
Their case study focused on creating marketing for Burn Notice. They developed the Covert Ops franchise, which puts the user into the show as a trainee under the show’s main character. It’s an interactive game experience over several missions. The missions integrated the show sponsor Saab. “We had an engaged fan base,” said Amato. There were seven missions a week, all with original video. “It was also a way to get the user into the car,” he said. “At the end, the results were pretty mind-blowing for GM.” Covert Ops delivered 600K visits since launch by over 500K unique players, and engaged fans for 14.4 minutes per session. It also drove 25K qualified leads to the advertiser, GM.
The last presentation was from Van Vandergrift from matrixx, who showed a couple of examples of what his company has done. He showed some “historic” viral videos, including one done in 2007 for under $5K, that garnered 350,000 views in the first 24 hours. He showed a web strip on fashion that cost less than $20K and made it easy to integrate brands. “The brands got more comfortable with knowing that the video would be pixelated and wouldn’t always look the best,” he said. He showed a Coupon Mom viral video, that’s garnered lots of advertiser support. “Take the brand, integrate the message where there’s real value for the consumer,” he said. He pointed as a big success IKEA’s web series with Ileanna Douglas and her friends, which has garnered 6 million views.
Tags: branding, brands, Burn Notice, Facebook, FOX Broadcasting, Glee, marketing, Matrixx Pictures, Men Who Stare at Goats, mobile marketing, MobilizedTV, NATPE, NATPE 2010, Omelet, Palisades MediaGroup, Sprint Mobile, Twitter, viral marketing, viral videos, Zack and Miri Make a Porno
This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Advertising/Marketing, Content, Home Feature, Monetizing Mobile.
