OgilvyEntertainment Press Review is a collection of the latest client, branded entertainment, and industry news.

Read Making magic, using logic: the Ogilvy Branded Entertainment Assessment Model^TM.

April 15^th, 2013

BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT

Content Marketing: It’s Not About Shock, but Good Storytelling Ad Age 04.09.13 Want your message to cut through the noise? You have to be doing content marketing — and doing it right. Content marketing is not a shallow advertisement, a blatant self-promotion or an attempt to trick readers. First and foremost, it has to be about great content. It’s writing a story that people want to e-mail a friend, or unearthing a fascinating piece of information buried in an organization’s little-read white paper. It’s a stunning infographic that breaks down a complex idea or drives home a jaw-dropping statistic that your organization happens to know. It’s a video interview featuring an expert who gives honest answers to interesting questions.

Pepsi Continues to Bask in Branded Content Glory with Top YouTube Views brandchannel 04.08.13 Pepsi took YouTube by storm last month according to Google’s YouTube Ads leaderboard. The brand is benefitting from its latest viral branded content hit “Test Drive”, which has over 33 million views. The video, which is the brand’s second attempt on a spoof video, garnered more plays than any of 2012′s leaderboard ads, earning 13 million more views than 2012′s top performer, Nike’s “My Time Is Now.”

Sponsors Now Pay for Online Articles, Not Just Ads NY Times 04.07.13 Articles in a series on Mashable.com called “What’s Inside” looked for all the world like the hundreds of other articles on the digital media site. But journalistically, they were something very different. The articles, about technology topics in a wide variety of products, including modems and the Hubble Space Telescope, were paid for by Snapdragon, a brand of processor chip made by Qualcomm, and the sponsor of the series. Most were even written by Mashable editorial employees.

ADVERTISING

Ad of the Day: Holiday Inn Express Ad Week 04.09.13 Holiday Inn Express may not have stayed smart, but it is trying to get smart again. The brand is reviving its popular, long-running “Stay Smart” message with two new spots from Ogilvy & Mather, which won the business last year. The original campaign, which featured commercials ending in the line “But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night,” ran for 11 years, starting in 1998, and was originally created by Fallon.

The Rebirth Of Dynamic Interactive Rich Media Advertising Marketing Daily 04.09.13 In April 2010, Steve Jobs wrote a blog post called “Thoughts on Flash.” Almost three years later, his words could not have more relevance.  In his post, Jobs details the limitations of Adobe Flash technology when it comes to developing video content for the Web. He notes obstacles that range from compliance with open Web standards to poor performance, to incompatibility with today’s mobile touch devices.

Survey: Online Video Advertising Dominates Local TV Stations’ Online Tune-In Campaigns Video Nuze 04.04.13 A new survey of local TV stations by video marketing platform provider Mixpo has found that between 58%-70% of local TV stations’ online tune-in campaign budgets (depending on market size) are allocated to online video ads. Fully 85% of local stations intend to use online video advertising for tune-in campaigns in 2013.

OgilvyEntertainment Press Review is a collection of the latest client, branded entertainment, and industry news.

Read Making magic, using logic: the Ogilvy Branded Entertainment Assessment Model^TM.

April 8^th, 2013

BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT

Perrier celebrates 150 years with Perrier Secret Place digital experience The Drum 04.04.13 Perrier sparkling natural mineral water has unveiled a digital experience to allow the public to participate in a ‘secret party’ in Paris through the eyes of 60 different mysterious characters. Created by Ogilvy & Mather Paris, the campaign also invites visitors to enter a sweepstakes for a chance to win an invitation to one of five of the wildest parties across the globe.

Axe saves Face With Skincare Line as Brand Gets Ready to Head to Space brandchannel 04.03.13 The idea of launching the Axe Face Line with a Facebook promotion obviously was too literal. So the Unilever brand is launching its new line of facial-care products instead with a “Facescore” campaign on Tumblr as a social face-off, supported by ads running on various media websites — and, of course, a presence on Facebook too. In doing so, Axe is entering a segment of the men’s care business of the first time — a more challenging territory than when it had a fairly singular focus on helping young guys simply smell great so they could attract hordes of women.

Is New Wes Anderson for Prada Short Film Wes Anderson Enough? brandchannel 04.02.13 Branded content is the hot new thing. Prada is the latest to the game with a short film directed by indie darling Wes Anderson and starring French actress Léa Seydoux. Anderson is best known for charming films filled with twee sensibilities such as Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, Moonrise Kingdom and The Royal Tenenbaums. But Anderson is actually an old branded content auteur.

ADVERTISING

Solixir Energy Drinks In ‘Working Dead’ Campaign Marketing Daily 04.03.13 Solixir, an energy-drink brand positioned as an “all-natural, healthy” functional beverage/dietary supplement, has launched a full-out marketing push in the heart of Chicago, with a campaign dubbed “The Working Dead.” The zombie-spoof campaign (“Fighting the Working Dead One Can at a Time”) spans “advertising dominations” in Chicago’s rapid transit system or “L,” deployment of Working Dead zombies, street teams working the Loop business district, and social media activations.

Facebook Highlights Ad Performance In Ads Manager Tools Online Media Daily 04.02.13 Facebook on Tuesday said it has updated its Ads Manager tool to let advertisers more easily see how campaigns are performing against specific goals and assess ROI. When marketers create their ads in the ad create tool, they can choose from the following advertising goals: get more Page Likes, promote Page posts, get new users, increase app engagement and increase attendance for Facebook events. The Ads Manager will then display the actions — such as Page Likes — that an advertiser cares most about more prominently in their campaign summary page and calculate the cost per Page Like for their ads.

New Mobile Ad Units Will Speak To Consumers, Literally Online Media Daily 04.01.13 If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s the value of a voice? That’s what Madison Avenue is about to find out as one of the biggest developers of voice and language translation technologies releases a new mobile advertising format enabling brands to literally talk one-on-one with consumers. The format, dubbed Voice Ads, is being rolled out by Nuance Communications, the same company that powers natural language voice programming for Google Voice and Apple’s Siri, and it’s already looking at applications for other media, including out-of-home and television.

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Can’t make it to Cannes for MIPTV this year? Stay abreast of key conferences, events, exclusive interviews and more, via our official Live coverage. The action kicks April 6 (MIPDoc & MIPFormats) & April 8 (MIPTV & MIPCube). Here’s how to follow it all!

1. MIPBlog : All you need to know about MIPTV, MIPCube, MIPDoc, MIPFormats, as it happens, is on MIPBlog: conference reports, key updates, and interviews (notably of the show’s biggest stars:  Gene Simmons or Famke Janssen to name just two)

2. Twitter: Follow @mip for official show tweets, including conference livetweets; and interact with delegates via the #MIPTV, #MIPCube, #MIPDoc and #MIPFormats hashtags

3. YouTube: MIPTV’s YouTube channel will be home to full conference videos, with one particular highlight: the Felix Baumgartner/Red Bull Stratos session will be available in full, from Tuesday evening. But only for two days, until the end of MIPTV!

4. Mymip app: The brand new (free) MIP Markets app features all of the above; but also the full list of companies participating in MIPTV, schedules and much more! Click here to download the app.

OgilvyEntertainment Press Review is a collection of the latest client, branded entertainment, and industry news.

Read Making magic, using logic: the Ogilvy Branded Entertainment Assessment Model^TM. 

April 1st, 2013 

BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT 

More Branded Content Opportunities In Flipboard’s App Upgrade Media Post Publications 03.28.13 One of the great success stories of the first years of the tablet platform, Flipboard, issued its 2.0 version release yesterday with an eye toward empowering users as editors. To some degree, this has always been the case. After all, Flipboard leverages a user’s social graph in order to render much of its well-designed magazine-like content. But with the new release, the app is now engaging users more directly in the process of making new content. With the touch of a button, the reader can now tag specific articles and build magazines that can be made public for others to see or kept private for their own later use.

IBM’s Long-Form Content Shows Its Technology in Action Ad Week 03.25.13 Idea: Technology for elder care has come a long way since “I’ve fallen … and I can’t get up!” IBM is pioneering sensors that monitor seniors’ homes in real time—temperature, carbon dioxide levels and much more—and send the data to city workers, who can dispatch friends, family or emergency personnel as needed. This remote solution can keep a town’s social-services costs down as its population ages. IBM tested the system in Bolzano, Italy, and had a great story to tell—one that stretched beyond a TV spot.

As Contempt For Push Grows, Branded Content Rises Media Post Publications 03.25.13 New research from Forrester shows that, with consumer faith in digital ads falling again, branded content offers marketers a better way into the customer awareness. But few CMOs have the right staff or systems in place to do so. First the bad news, based on responses from 58,000 people in Europe and the U.S: Trust in one-way push communications is dismal, with Europeans slightly more skeptical of just about every type of communications. Only 9% of Americans, and 8% of Europeans trust text messages sent from brands. And banner ads on Web sites? Just 10% and 8%. For mobile apps, trust inches up to 12% and 10%. And emails fare slightly better, with 18% of Americans saying they trust such messages, compared to just 11% of those in Europe.

ADVERTISING

What You Didn’t Post, Facebook May Still Know NY Times 03.25.13 Debra Aho Williamson, an advertising industry analyst and devoted coffee drinker, was intrigued by a promotion that popped up on her Facebook page recently. Sign up for a Starbucks loyalty card, it said, and get $5 off. “When I saw that, I thought, I’m already a member of their loyalty club,” she said. “Why don’t they know that?”

Smartclip Launches SmartX Platform For Video Real-Time Media and Marketing 03.25.13 Smartclip last week launched SmartX Platform, a programmatic video ad platform which opens up inventory on private exchanges in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Smartclip is Adconion Media Group’s multiscreen video and brand advertising platform. According to a release, SmartX Platform is a multimillion-dollar investment that took over 18 months to create from scratch. Ronald Schaber, COO and co-founder of Smartclip, stated, “We are seeing increased demand from our clients for programmatic access to premium inventory.” As a result, the company decided to build their own SSP.

Native Video Ads Outperform Pre-Roll Ads Media Post Publications 03.21.13 Continuing to push the promise of scalable “native” advertising, Sharethrough just released some Nielsen-vetted data, which — surprise, surprise — reflects well on the model formerly known as the “advertorial.” Using Nielsen’s Online Brand Effect survey tool, Sharethrough compared the effectiveness of its native video ads in affecting brand lift metrics — like awareness, purchase intent and favorability — with that of pre-roll video ad units.

ENTERTAINMENT

Pivot’s Shapiro: “We are a general entertainment network” realscreen 03.28.13 Nearly three months after announcing it had taken over U.S. networks Halogen TV and Documentary Channel, Participant Media yesterday (March 27) lifted the lid on its social action TV channel at an inaugural upfront in New York City. Social action entertainment channel Pivot, launching August 1, will open with a slate that includes feature documentaries, reality, drama series, variety shows and an open source talk show.

83% of tablet owners use device while watching TV, BBC finds The Drum 03.26.13 New research from BBC World News and BBC.com has found that almost half (42 per cent) of 25 to 34 year olds are likely to turn to TV as their primary medium for finding out breaking news, with 66 per cent then turning to the internet to find out more information.

iTunes, YouTube Top With Online Entertainment Users Media Post Publications 03.22.13 Not everyone associates Apple with online entertainment, but new data shows that its iTunes property is second only to YouTube in the category. The music-cum-media content hub attracted nearly 45 million unique U.S. Web users in January — each of whom, on average, spent over an hour on the platform during the month, per Nielsen.

Recording TV Content is Popular, But Many Shows Are Never Watched Media Post Publications 03.22.13 TV time-shifting — the activity of consumers and their DVRs — can be wasteful. A new study says about a third (36%) of all worldwide recorded TV content is never watched. In the U.S. that number is higher — 41%, per Motorola Mobility’s annual media survey. Consumers behavior with recorded content comes in different variations. For example, 72% are “hoarders” — recording to collect the “box-set” of a specific TV program.

MEDIA & TECH

BuzzMedia Spins Into SpinMedia, Revamps Network Online Media Daily 03.25.13 On the heels of cutting about a fifth of its workforce, pop-culture blog network Buzz Media is changing its name to SpinMedia, and completely rethinking its editorial and design underpinnings. Along with “a new editorial vision,” the company is adopting a “completely new technology infrastructure,” according to CEO Steve Hansen.

AT&T Users Can Access WatchESPN, Disney Media Daily News 03.25.13 AT&T U-verse subscribers will have access to multiple ESPN networks live online under a new arrangement. The telco joins Time Warner Cable and Verizon, among others, offering the WatchESPN service so far. The service is accessible on tablets, smartphones and to certain Xbox Live subscribers. WatchESPN is ESPN’s version of TV Everywhere. AT&T is making it available to TV customers receiving ESPN networks.

Most Americans want YouTube in pay TV package Fierce Online Video 03.22.13 Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs) worried about losing customers to over-the-top (OTT) video offerings should include that content as part of their pay TV packages, research from Parks Associates suggests. The biggest reason to add OTT to pay TV is that it’s what customers want, the researchers said. The second best reason is to put a crimp in competing online video services.

SUSTAINABILITY

America’s New Sustainable Manufacturing Hubs Will Breed Creativity And Jobs Fast Company 03.28.13 Obama’s State of the Union Address this year was a steady dopamine drip for me: “We have cleared away the rubble of crisis … making America a magnet for manufacturing … a once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3-D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.” And be-still-my-heart: “we are finally poised to control our own energy future.” He might have well described the Emerald City, as far as I was concerned.

New York Auto Show: Car Brands Race to Feed into Evolving Green Market brandchannel 03.28.13 The stagnation of the U.S. market for all-electric vehicles has automakers thinking more creatively about how to address American consumers’ desire for maximum fuel economy without attempting fruitlessly to guilt them into buying EVs. The evidence of this trend has been abundant this week during the media previews at the New York International Auto Show, and news that the Obama administration is planning to get tougher on car emission standards, with “sweeping rules” expected from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requiring cleaner gasoline and cars. 

IBM Mobile App to Help Solve Water Challenges Environmental Leader 03.25.13 IBM has launched a crowdsourcing project to help capture, share and analyze information about the water distribution system in South Africa. The project, called WaterWatchers, is driven by a free mobile phone application and SMS capability that will enable South African citizens to report water leaks, faulty water pipes and general conditions of water canals. Every update will provide data points to an aggregated WaterWatchers report to create a single view of the issues challenging South Africa’s water distribution system.

OgilvyEntertainment Press Review is a collection of the latest client, branded entertainment, and industry news.

Read Making magic, using logic: the Ogilvy Branded Entertainment Assessment Model^TM. 

March 25th, 2013

BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT

Using ‘Sponsored Content’ to Keep Viewers Watching NY Times 03.20.13 TELEVISION networks and channels are becoming increasingly involved in the creation of commercials that appear during their shows, hoping to counter the growing penchant among viewers for zapping or zipping through conventional commercials.

Q&A: Twitter, Facebook Rewrite Content Marketing Rules Media Post Publications 03.17.13 With marketers spending something like $40.2 billion last year on the custom content stampede, it’s no surprise they are also struggling for ways to differentiate themselves. Doing so is increasingly tough. For one thing, consumers are developing higher standards for brand-related content online. And for another, they are far less inclined to trust any brand messages. Matt Kumin, founder and CEO of PublishThis, a cloud-based content marketing platform, fills Marketing Daily in on what he sees as the big changes ahead, as brands try to find new ways to connect with content.

Adidas Pushing Adicolor Line with Spots Stars, Video Game brandchannel 03.19.13 Champs Sports, the mall-based sporting goods retailer owned by Foot Locker and Adidas Originals are launching the latest adicolor Collection with a Tumblr-inspired ad campaign featuring a 30-second spot with Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers, Iman Shumpert of the New York Knicks and Von Miller of the Denver Broncos.

ADVERTISING 

Reaching Those on the Wrong Side of the Digital Divide NY Times 03.20.13 THE Advertising Council and Connect2Compete, a nonprofit group whose goal is to eliminate the digital divide in the United States, are introducing a public service campaign to help those who are not digitally literate find free training to obtain these skills. In remarks prepared for a speech in Washington last month about Connect2Compete’s efforts, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, said approximately one in three Americans, or 100 million people, still do not have broadband in their homes, with low-income Americans and minorities “disproportionately on the wrong side of the digital divide.”

What Is Programmatic Advertising And Is It The Future? Forbes 03.20.13 While Facebook has begun to evaluate the potential of using hashtags just within their social platform, as an FBX integration partner We create a social feedback loop so that we can pull from campaign data across the Internet, from external social channels and then back into Facebook. Hashtags can encompass much more than just a company or a brand name. They can convey an emotion, a category or theme. For example, during holidays like Valentines Day, an advertiser like flowers.com or Mars may wish to target users who tweet #love, #commitment or #gift.

Heineken Breaks From The Mainstream Media Post Publications 03.20.13 When Lesya Lysyj joined Heineken USA in 2011 as chief marketing officer, she knew she had two things going for her: a product that men absolutely love and a category that isn’t shy about using humor as a marketing ploy. But Lysyj recognized that to elevate an iconic beer brand like Heineken, long associated with the popular James Bond franchise, she needed to move away from the sameness of mainstream beer advertising.

ENTERTAINMENT

The New Rules of The Hyper-Social, Data-Driven, Actor-Friendly, Super-Seductive Platinum Age of Television Wired 03.19.13 On February 7, the fourth season of Community kicked off on NBC. It was something of a shock that the show had survived for so long. It ranked 193rd among broadcast shows. In May 2012, series creator and showrunner Dan Harmon had been unceremoniously canned. And on the night it aired, the season premiere pulled in just 4 million viewers. That’s a mere quarter of the audience enjoyed by ratings juggernauts like Two and a Half Men or The Big Bang Theory. It even underperformed a rerun of the ABC reality show Shark Tank on the Nielsen charts.

CBS Puts Their Network In Your Pocket…Sort Of Media Post Publications 03.19.13 As cable niche networks cater to specific tastes and the DVR lets us cherry-pick programming disentangled from their grid, the brand value of the traditional TV network is debatable at best. Do many of us really identify CBS, NBC, Fox and ABC prime time with specific types of programs? Do they have a tone and spirit that unifies the grid across morning, day and nighttime parts?

ABC Works on an App for Live Streaming Shows to Mobile Devices NY Times 03.18.13 THE WALT DISNEY Company, while sorting out the future of the online video Web site Hulu, has an app in the works that may render Hulu passé for some people. The app will live stream ABC programming to the phones and tablets of cable and satellite subscribers, allowing those subscribers to watch “Good Morning America” on a tablet while standing in line at Starbucks, for instance, or watch “Nashville” on a smartphone while riding a bus home from work. The app could become available to some subscribers this year, according to people briefed on the project, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

MEDIA & TECH

Twitter Buzz Tied To TV Ratings Media Post Publications 03.20.13 Emerging from second-screen viewing, the marriage of TV and Twitter is becoming the digital era version of movies and popcorn. Some 10 million social media comments are made about TV content each day, with 95% made on Twitter, according to social TV analytics firm Bluefin Labs, which Twitter acquired last month.

Here’s What Can Happen In An Internet Minute readwrite 03.20.13 If you were to guess how many people logged in to Facebook in a single second, what would you say? 10,000? 100,000? According to a new infographic posted by Intel, it’s a staggering 277,000 logins every second, even as six million Facebook pages are getting viewed in that same second.

Netflix, Others Turn to Social for Expansion brandchannel 03.15.13 If you remember when social integration meant how well you played on the playground or lined up for lunch in second grade, you’re probably an analog native. For the digital native, it means the growing integration of social networking on sites heretofore not inherently social. At the front of the pack? Netflix.

SUSTAINABILITY

IBM Works for Free to Build Relationships With African Cities Bloomberg 03.21.13 International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), which makes most of its money from high-end technology contracts, is betting that some of its growth will come from customers who don’t pay anything — yet. The company has developed an application to track the water system in Tshwane, South Africa, where more than half the population lives in slums that often aren’t connected to plumbing. IBM is letting the community use the app for free, after it sent a team of executives to evaluate the system as part of a corporate service project in October.

Nike Boosts Sustainability of Textiles With New Swiss Partner Bloomberg 03.21.13 Nike is partnering with a Swiss company to increase the sustainability of textiles used in its products, which are made in nearly 800 factories worldwide. Nike will provide its suppliers with screening tools made by the company, called bluesign technologies, that will allow them to select more sustainable dyes, detergents, and chemicals for use in the textile manufacturing process. The partnership was announced March 18.

Nestle outlines sustainability and nutrition goals Food Navigator 03.14.13 Nestle has published a raft of sustainability and nutrition commitments it aims to meet by 2020 or earlier, including sourcing 100% certified sustainable palm oil, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and improving nutrition labeling.