You've no doubt seen the spots from Harvest for Gatorade and Toyota, shown here, from Harvest Films. I love how realistic these things look. My only critique is that they share a "look," and share the conceit of caught-on-video verisimilitude. But still - pretty cool.
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"Family Guy" is going where no cartoon has gone before - and that's saying a lot for such a raunchy show.
Or rather, the creator of that raunchy show, Seth MacFarlane, is taking to the web in a whole new way.
Today's New York Times is reporting that MacFarlane has inked a deal with Google in what could be a decidedly different way to deliver online advertising.
At it's most essential, MacFarlane will create a series of shorts called "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy."
Fine, been there, done that.
But here's the twist: These shorts won't be featured on YouTube or on some dedicated "Cavalcade" website.
Instead, they'll be part of Google's AdSense network, and will run on any participating AdSense site deemed to effectively attract MacFarlane's prime audience of hip young men.
The content will play out with a pre-roll ad or a "sponsored by" banner featuring a Google advertising client. And revenues for any click through will be shared by Google, MacFarlane, and the site owner.
Soooo. In other words, the model is to make money by delivering content that sits on top of your content, and gives you a tiny slice of the revenue for ad interest sparked by content that doesn't have anything to do with yours. It's kind of like NBC earning ad revenue for running content on CBS - and CBS agreeing to it.
Which may or may not be a good thing. And either way, it's certainly novel: A show that only exists on other people's content.
What's left out of the picture thus far is whether fans of the "show" will be able to go to one central location to get their fix, or if they have to surf umpteen million sites to find the next episode.
Somewhere, somehow, I can't help thinking Stewie is laughing out loud.
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MTV is getting serious about the Web.
NBC said today it expects to make tens of millions in profits off its website by next year.
And Reuters is reporting that MTV has major designs on tying at least three of its new shows to web initiatives.
Already, "FNMTV" airs new videos every Friday and invites viewers to comment on them, and even upload reinterpretations at MTV.com.
And coming up, the network will add viewer-generated content with a show called "G's to Gents," "America's Best Dance Crew: Season 2," and - help us - "Paris Hilton's My New BFF."
"There was a time when the music video itself is what happened in culture, but now it's the music video and what everyone has to say about it that is what's happening," Brian Graden, president of MTV programming, tells the news service.
The announcement comes as Variety reports MTV Networks is relaunching Atom.com under its Comedy Central brand, which will feature streams of made-for-Web comedic shorts, and will will offer would-be auteurs $500 and a cut of ad revenues for selected viewer-generated content.
It's a natural extension as MTV fights the never ending battle to stay relevant to young audiences.
And it plays to what MTV calls "multi-plat-fornication," the idea that the brand has to be accessible as much on the web, mobile and other devices as it is on cable television.
After all, we'd never want the web - or anything else - to kill the video star.
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Back in April, I posted about the obnoxious CW promo for "Gossip Girl" that connects the "F Word" with "God" in a teenage colloquialism.
Now, CW's CMO is defending the promotion in an video clip from AD AGE.
When you watch, you'll realize he actually makes some sense.
Not that it makes it any less obnoxious.
The promo is shown here, the explanation is shown here.
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Forget couch potatoes - mouse potatoes are the new game in town.
According to comScore, there's been a 2.3% increase in the number of people watching online videos via sites like YouTube, which brings the number to 135 million unique users - up from 132 million in May 2007.
No big deal - until you learn that there has also been a 44.3% increase in the minutes of online video watched per person. That's about 17 more seconds per video - indicating that we're growing more accustomed to watching longer videos online.
Alas, it turns out the couch potatoes and the mouse potatoes may be many of the same people.
"It's no longer that people just get sent a link by one of their friends," comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman tells today's New York Times. "Now they actively seek things out. 'I just saw this on TV, and I'm going to find it online.' I think video is being seen more and more as an extension of search."
Actually, as more full-episode offerings of TV shows come online, I expect this number to surge over the next five years.
If you've watched many broadcast network shows online - not an entirely bad experience, even with forced commercials - you have to wonder when the cable television model will be called into question.
Why pay $80 a month for cable, when you can get it all online for free?
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So many good initiatives, so few awards to hand out.
ADWEEK is reporting that the Cyber Lions jury at the Cannes International Advertising Festival awarded three Grand Prix awards this year.
According to reports, Top marks went to Japanese clothier Uniglo, for its "Uniqlock" web clock, which used interactive video to show women posing for the time of day (hands and lets extended to show high noon, or 2:20 PM, for example).
Scandinavia Online's live banner ads, in which copywriters would display real-time messages and respond to visitors, also won.
And the ambitious alternate reality game "Year Zero" promoting Nine Inch Nails - in which USB drives planted at concert venues in Barcelona and Lisbon led to an extensive online game - also won.
One of my favorite campaigns of the year - Crispin Porter's "Whopper Freakout" had to settle for a Gold. I've heard that some of the best scenes from the series - in which unwitting Burger King customers are told the burger giant no longer sells the Whopper sandwich, to get outrage reaction - couldn't be used because a release couldn't be obtained by one hilarious customer who stormed out of the store in outrage.
To hear my interview with Crispin CD Alex Bogusky on the thinking behind these kinds of efforts for Burger King, start here.
To read more about the Grand Prix winners, click here.
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HBO's 'Voyeur Project' stands to be the top award winner at this year's Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
As you see in this video, it involved a massive drama played across eight groups of characters in a stage designed to look like a cutaway of an apartment building that was then projected on the side of a real building so passersby could watch.
Truly brilliant.
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Apparently E.T. is out, and Batman - along with a bevy of user-generated videos - are in.
Hershey's Reese's brand is unveiling new Batman-inspired peanut butter cups - and a new website that enables fans to play the role of Joker's henchmen in their own videos for the chance to win a customized MV Agusta F4 Bat Cycle.
It's all just in time for "Batman: The Dark Knight," which opens July 18.
At least one user-generated video entry seems more inspired by "Crocodile Hunter" than Caped Crusader - but no matter. The user's in control, right?
As for the Batman cups, here at Gen Wow, we analyze each of Reese's seasonal editions - we're big fans of the giant peanut butter cup Easter Eggs, though the Christmas Jingle Bells cups are crowd pleasers, too.
Still, I've never been a fan of bat-shaped candies, whether you're talking gummy bears or Halloween treats.
Yes, there's a "Dark Chocolate" edition - and Batman Reese's Pieces and a Batman Kit Kat Bar, too (shoulda tied into "Katwoman")
We'll see if the tie-in spurs more sales - or whether the Joker's on Reese's.
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The death of traditional media has been greatly exaggerated.
Of course we all knew that - along with the growing recognition that there is no "new media" or "traditional media," only "media."
The New York Times is reporting that a study from Yankelovich is showing those older forms of media, such as television, are still "much more likely" to make a positive impression with consumers than ads running in digital media.
According to the Times, the study covered 16 types of media, including billboards, newspapers, magazines, radio, television and movie theater commercials, along with digital forms such as social networking sites, video games, YouTube, banner ads and so on.
Among the findings:
• 56 percent of survey respondents said traditional media ads made a positive impression, in contrast to 31 percent who said that about digital media ads
• Thirteen percent reported a negative impression of traditional media ads versus 21 percent for digital media ads
• Thirty-two percent said they had neither a positive nor a negative impression of traditional media ads, in contrast to 48 percent who said they had neither a good or bad impression of digital media ads
Why is this? In the Times piece, some opine that digital media started off with advertising, and advertising came later. Others think it may be that we just haven't mastered the kind of advertising that will work best in digital media.
There's probably a little truth in both. But it may also have to do less with whether something's "analog" or "digital." So-called traditional media is a "lean back" experience where we're enjoying information and entertainment content, and advertising is now much more easy to avoid, or just as entertaining as the content.
Digital, on the other hand, tends to be a "lean forward" media, in which we are usually trying to do something - find something or accomplish a task. In such a scenario, advertising would obviously feel more intrusive and unwelcome.
As the two worlds converge, many if not all the distinctions will fall away - and have more to do with the "why" we're experience a media channel, not the "how."
For entirely different views from mine, read the Times piece, here.
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Old is what's new at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
Ad Age is reporting that Forsman & Bodenfors and the Swedish Agency's client, AMF Pension, won the Grand Prix in media today for an initiative that enables young consumers to upload images of themselves to see what they'll look like when they're old.
The idea: To encourage young people to start thinking now about retirement.
According to the pub, the campaign started with a TV spot that portrayed famous young Swedes as senior citizens, and invited young people to send in their pictures to be digitally manipulated to see what they'll look like when they're 70.
In outdoor ads, the face on the poster changed from young to old depending on the viewing angle.
And online ads also asked people to upload their pictures to glimpse themselves at 70.
A total of 322,946 pictures were submitted online, and advertising awareness of the pension company rose by 33%. In fact, an estimated 15% of the target audience in Sweden interacted with the AMF brand at some point during the campaign.
Read all about it, here. To see how mobile fits into the effort, click here.
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