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Inside 'HBO Imagine': Interview With Alison Moore, VP, Brand Strategy & Digital Platforms, HBO (Part 1)

HBO gave itself a tough act to follow - and it's working to do just that.

During the last few weeks, HBO has launched an ambitious sequel to its double Cannes Grand Prix winning "Voyeur Project," called "HBO Imagine."

Not to be outdone by "Voyeur's" projection of dramas on New York City buildings, "Imagine" features, among other things, a giant video cube that displays scenes from a mini-drama shot from four different perspectives, so you have to view each side of the cube to get the big picture.

At hboimagine.com, viewers can unlock each of these video sequences as they progress through a broader narrative, with a pay off for people who unlock each of 37 complete scenes.

It is a massive new undertaking for HBO, which hopes to top the number of impressions it earned for "Voyeur," as well as reinforce its brand positioning in a compelling new way.

In my new book, THE ON-DEMAND BRAND (AMACOM/McGraw-Hill, Spring, 2010) I talk to Courteney Monroe, HBO's executive vice president of consumer marketing - and a newly minted Brandweek Marketer of the Year - about the brand's approach to efforts like "Voyeur" and "Imagine," and why they're so central to creating consumer marketing that's as inspired as it is effective. (Despite the recession, HBO's subscriber numbers are actually up, to 27 million.)

In the days just after "Imagine" launched, I also spoke with Alison Moore, vice president of brand strategy and digital platforms for HBO, about why this campaign is such an exciting successor to "Voyeur," and about her views on how this initiative will fuel subscriber growth (and reduce churn) in the year ahead.

Part One: "Imagine" That: HBO's New Take On Making The Physical/Virtual World Connection (approx 7:33)

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Back from Digital Hollywood

Just don't call us the Digital Hollywood Squares.

I was in Santa Monica this week to participate in a panel discussion on games as an advertising and marketing platform for entertainment and consumer products brands.

It was a lively discussion with executives from several of the online and mobile gaming outfits, and hosted by James Green, CEO of Giant Realm. Great group of people, and an interesting debate.

Some really intelligent (and funny) people aboard - which made it feel like a game show.

Peter Marshall, eat your heart out.

Read more, here.

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First Look: The Cover of My New Book, 'The On-Demand Brand'

Forgot to mention that during my speaking engagement at the Global Retail Executive Council at CTIA this week, I was able to share the first glimpse of the cover art for my new book, THE ON-DEMAND BRAND (Amacom/McGraw-Hill, Spring, 2009). Be sure to read all about the book, here. 

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Microsoft's Vision For The Future Sounds Like 'Minority Report'

Your body becomes the controller for video games - and for interacting with the Web. Your computer screen is now the nearest wall. And you move files and other objects through hand movements, not mouse movements.

"There will be a successor to the desktop [computer]," Craig Mundie, head of Microsoft Research, tells The Seattle Times. "It's the room."

Given we are talking about Microsoft and its technology for enabling these kinds of things, one has to ask: Are we going to need to call a contractor when the room crashes?

Read more, here.

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Esquire's October Issue Features E-Ink Cover

Esquire's October issue will look back at its 75 year history with a cover that looks forward to the future.

AD AGE is reporting that the issue will use electronic paper technology from E-Ink Corp. The result is a kind of stock-paper thin electronic billboard, flashing its message in three parts: "The 21st Century...Begins...Now."

The inside cover features the first E-Ink ad for Ford Flex, which has an animated background behind a picture of the crossover SUV.

In my book BRANDING UNBOUND, I talk to E-Ink founder Russ Wilcox, who tells me that this technology will one day enable actual paper newspapers and magazines to be dynamically updated with the latest information - along with fully-animated, always-up-to-date advertising offers, ala the periodicals and product packaging shown in the movie Minority Report.

"The idea is a computer display that looks and feels just like a newspaper but has a little receiver built into it," Wilcox tells me in the book. "It would receive wireless updates so you always have a newspaper that's up to date."

For now, at least, leave it to a 75-year-old paper magazine to show us publishing future, today.

Read more, here.

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ESPN To Drop Commentators Into Virtual Replays & What-Ifs

Real world sports anchors are known for seeming almost lifelike. And they're about to interact with virtual sports figures who do the same.

Today's New York Times reports that ESPN has been quietly working with Electronic Arts on a technology that would enable ESPN commentators to interact live with realistic, 3D virtual players as the promote upcoming sporting events during broadcasts.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but John Skipper, ESPN's EVP of content tells the Times, "It's a way for us to remain relevant...We want to make sure we remain connected to lots and lots of fans, and using the language that gamers understand is one way.'

The times describes the tech - which will debut on NFL Coundown this Sunday thusly:

The complex technology... involves using an Electronic Arts’ title — say Madden NFL 09 — with specialized digital camera equipment in the studio. Presto: Both real and virtual people move around the ESPN set to demonstrate plays and possible situations.

Why that's interesting is not entirely clear. But the pub continues:

And the sports behemoth has more ambitious plans down the road. Instead of using the technology, called EA Sports Virtual Playbook, to tell viewers what to look for before games, ESPN wants to use it in reverse to play the ultimate Monday morning quarterback.

Using real information from a game, ESPN anchors could reprogram an actual sequence to show, for example, what would have happened had Peyton Manning thrown right instead of left.

Now that sounds cool. The what-ifs and replays could make for very entertaining television - fusing games virtual and real in a whole new way.

Read all about it, here.

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Who You Gonna Call: 'Ghostbusters' Debuts - On USB Drive

Sony's releasing its 1984 hit "Ghostbusters" on USB Drive, dubbed as the first time a major movie has been released this way. Not sure what the point is. But according to Ad Lab, even the Bible's on USB now. So look out Blu-ray...not.

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New Adobe Acrobat Adds Video To PDFs

The latest version of Adobe's Acrobat will enable video to be added to PDFs.

Today's Wall Street Journal is reporting that Acrobat 9 will allow users to include Flash-based video when they create PDFs.

Until now, PDF documents could only include text and simple graphics. And as any creative will immediately recognize, the ability to add video represents all-new opportunities, and a new multimedia role, for PDFs, at least as they're experienced on-screen. (Though it'll be interesting to see what the still  video window looks like when printed.)

Which leads to another question: Is "PDF" - which stands for "portable document format" - still a good name, or is it, too, in need of updating?

Read all about it, here (sub. req.)

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Microsoft Experimenting With New Ad Technologies

First its CEO famously declared the Internet will never amount to much.

Now Microsoft's trying to catch up in online search, content and advertising with all this talk of acquiring Yahoo for $44.6 billion (boo on that).

But that's not all, folks.

The company is also quietly experimenting with other new advertising technologies, too, through its adCenter Labs.

According to reports from the Associated Press and Marketing Vox, Microsoft's ad experiments include a system that analyzes online videos to determine the ideal stretch of time and spot on the screen for an advertiser's "bug," or logo. For example, if a car company wanted to show its logo for 10 seconds in the bottom-right-hand corner of the screen, the computer program would find the 10 seconds in which the logo interferes least with the action in the video.

Another uses speech recognition to make a transcript of a video, then served up ads alongside the video. As the topics discussed on screen changed, so did the ads.

Another projects an interactive screen on bare walls, which can be used for shopping or other purposes.

And don't forget the effort with EA to enable advertisers to post ads in Xbox 360-based games.

My reaction: adCenter should be a VC or M&A group within Microsoft, instead of an idea lab.

It's hard to imagine Microsoft innovating much of anything; it acquires (and/or copies) innovation from outside sources.

Then again, that would lead to more Microsoft-Yahoo like deals.

And who needs more of that?

Read more about the adCenter efforts here and here.

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TiVo Woos Companies It Once Threatened, Even Though New Research Shows It May Be More Threatening Than Ever

TiVo may have turned a new leaf when it comes to marketing services to broadcasters and marketers, but a new study from ABI Research shows these players should be more afraid of TiVo and other DVRs than ever.

TiVo has made a big to-do about recent partnerships with NBC Universal and media buying giant Carat, in which the Alviso, Calif.-based company will provide second-by-second viewership data and demographic ratings information collected from a sample of 20,000 TiVo subscribers. The idea is to provide information on which ads people are still watching. For the rest of the audience, the company is also helping advertisers place interactive banner ads that make sponsors names visible as their ads are being fast-forwarded.

"When I got to this company two years ago, TiVo was very much viewed as a pariah within advertising circles," CEO Tom Rogers tells today's New York Times, adding that "all the networks" were now in discussions with TiVo to replicate its new deals. "We aggressively went out and said, 'We're going to partner with the media industry.'"

Maybe so, but is a sponsor name any more effective than a fast-forwarded commercial? And, according to a new report from ABI resesearch, the number of such commercials are growing fast. In a recent consumer survey, the firm found that nearly four of five TiVo customers, and over 82% of service provider DVR customers, indicated they skip all or most commercials.

On the upside for programmers like NBC, at least, both TiVo and carrier DVR owners are likely to record significant amounts of TV per day, with nearly half of TiVo owners indicating they recorded two or more hours per day while 43% of service provider DVR owners recording a similar amount of shows. Meaning they may be watching more TV than ever - just not at regularly scheduled times (heck, that's definitely the case in my household.)

For advertisers, it may be time to revamp the company logo for what could be a lot of exposure on what may end up being their expensive, but unwatched, ads.

For the New York Times piece on TiVo's new emphasis, click here.

For more on the ABI study, click here.

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Yahoo & Adobe To Run Ads - In PDF Files

Don't freak out. It's not quite how it sounds.

The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and others are reporting that Yahoo and Adobe have announced plans to enable publishers to run ads in PDF documents.

That's as in publishers of web and magazine content that make their content available for PDF download.

Used to be they'd have to sell and layout ads in pdfs manually. Now, they can show ads along side their PDFs through the free Adobe Reader without having to sell or layout the ads, so long as they sign onto the network.

Advertisers can also place ads directly through Yahoo, buying text ads that would appear to the right of the PDF when viewed via Reader.

"It's separate from the PDF content itself, so it's not overlaying" information in the document, Kurt Garbe, entrepreneur in residence at Adobe, tells Extreme Tech.

Not ideal for readers. But a savvy move by Yahoo and Adobe.

Read more about it here.

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Are DVRs, iTunes Killing Off 'Battlestar Galactica'?

Fans of Sci-Fi's "Battlestar Galactica" are no doubt still reeling after last night's third season, cliffhanger finale.

Afficionados may find themselves trying to divine the meaning of Starbuck's reappearance, why the frack four shipmates (revealed to be Cylons) who have never even been in our solar system have found themselves reciting the lyrics of (Jimi Hendrix's cover of) Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower," or why the hell we have to wait until 2008 to find out what happens (though a flashback movie involving the Pegasus will hit TV, and a day later, DVD, before season four begins).

But a bigger question looms: "Galatica," once a ratings king on cable television (and still a critical darling), has been faltering in the ratings. Not because people aren't interested in the show. It's because they aren't watching it on TV anymore. Instead, they're watching it on DVR and via iTunes.

As a result, season four's currently slated 22 episodes are rumored to be the last.

So, "Battlestar" may not just be the best show on television. It may be the first example of a post advertising, and post television ratings, age. One where programming will need to pay for itself through downloads, DVDs, and licensed products. And one where marketers must do more than just talking about the new advertising reality. They're going to have to survive it.

As for what comes next for the good ship Galactica, the best resource I've seen comes from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Big time spoiler alert.

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Nintendo Helps AP News Readers Go Wii

Hankering for an update on President Bush while you play Pokemon?

Craving the latest on Senate intrigue while you play Super Mario Bros.

Yeah, me neither.

Nonetheless, Nintendo Co. is launching a new online news service called "The Wii News Channel" through its wildly popular Wii console.

According to the Wasthington Post, the channel, scheduled to debut Satruday, will stream via consoles with a broadband Internet connection and the Opera Web browser, and will primarily feature top news stories and photographs from the Associated Press.

According to the Post, a recent report from the market research firm NPD Group found the Wii has sold 1.1 million units since it was released in the U.S. on Nov. 19, with 604,200 of those units sold in December.

"The Nintendo Wii demographic is definitely a wider demographic than your traditional hardcore gamer," Billy Pidgeon, a video game industry analyst at IDC in New York, tells the pub. "It kind of makes sense for other types of content to be made available on the Wii."

Hey, if you not letting your users to download movies and TV shows, I guess news is an option.

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CES: It's No Longer 'New Media'/'Old Media': Now, It's Just 'Media'

My favorite quote from this year's Consumer Electronics Show (so far) comes from Leslie Moonves, president of CBS:

"The days of old media and new media are over. Now, it's just media."

From Verizon's new multi-channel, broadcast-quality mobile television service, to new devices from Apple (via MacWorld), HP, Yahoo and others that allow viewers to watch Web content on their big screen TVs, to new efforts from Moonves' CBS, Yahoo, Showtime and others to enable viewers to watch their TV shows on the Web, video content is becoming available anytime, everywhere. Couch potatoes become mouse potatoes and vice versa.

In fact, research firm The Diffusion Group announced today that these kind of solutions will reach 162 million consumers by 2011, ushering in a "new wave" of television viewing, one "defined less by 'walled garden' PayTV operators and more by open access and a variety of highly-specialized niche content."

But what of advertising models? What is the point of advertising on TV when people use DVRs to skip over commercials? Why buy online, when most content, at least the kind that's paid for, is commercial free? And how, exactly, do you redefine advertising and "the brand experience" when markets we once grouped into mass markets are self-segmenting into niches as small as one?

Of course, these are just a few facets of a much larger subject we cover here at GENERATION WOW (and mobile-centric sister site, BRANDING UNBOUND) - engaging today's technology-savvy, pop culture-obsessed, brand-fickle consumer republic.

Given the announcements emanating out of Las Vegas so far this week - it's a subject that's going to get a lot more interesting in the year ahead.

 

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