OTOinsights

Jason Varitalk

Just when we all thought the Snakes On A Plane marketing buzz had a reached an imploding peak, along comes this ad execution which rivals the "put yourself in Wedding Crashers" site in terms of pure virability.

You go to the landing page, give it your first name, your friend's first name, their relationship to you, a few of their personal interests, their preferred mode of transportation, their job, and both your phone numbers, and Samuel L. Jackson calls them up and delivers a highly-customized message berating them for not going to see his new movie asap.

Threw my buddy Dan into the mix after finding the site yesterday, guy is bald and works for British Telecom. Dan got a call ten seconds later from Sam L. telling him (DANIEL!) needs to quit that lame-ass telecom job, stop screwing around waxing his damn chrome dome, and get the hell out and see Snakes... ON A PLANE!

Great stuff. Never seen so many new marketing ideas being pumped into one product, but damn if it isn't all working.

MobileWOOD

IdeaMill reports that Aryan Kaganof shot a new (feature length) film, SMS Sugar Man, with eight Sony Ericsson W900i mobile phones. The film is about Sugar Man, a pimp with principles, and has been transferred to 35mm for release to theaters.

Jeremi Karnell-President, One to One Interactive

WebMD Adds Broadband Video

Advertiser demand for richer, more engaging formats will drive many content-rich sites like WebMD to offer ad-sponsored streaming video in 2006. I've screengrabbed on the left an image of WebMD's streaming video, capturing part of AstraZeneca's pre-roll promotional message for its breast cancer educational website.

While the idea of streaming audiovisual content  is easy for sites with ready access to appropriate footage (e.g. iFilm, CNN, MTV, etc.), WebMD's decision to create original content with an inhouse team shows what can be done. They've also been smart about anticipating their advertisers' special needs, offering pharmaceutical marketers the ability to surround their video with promotional messaging and to display a full copy of the FDA-required Patient Insert document. From today's MediaPost:

"WEBMD RECENTLY LAUNCHED A NEW broadband video section that offers visitors new streaming content daily, the company said Wednesday. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is sponsoring some of the clips with a 60-second pre-roll ad directing visitors to a site that provides information about breast cancer. WebMD is producing the content itself, with its existing editorial staff--some of whom have backgrounds in broadcast journalism--said Wayne Gattinella, WebMD president and CEO.

The move to include streaming video is, in part, a response to marketers' increasing clamor for video inventory. "We have been asked by virtually every one of our clients and most of the major agencies for broadband inventory for promotional purposes," Gattinella said. "The fact is that the demand for broadband promotional inventory far exceeds the supply on the Internet right now."

AstraZeneca's sponsorship of WebMD's streaming video content is also noteworthy, although not entirely surprising. In the world of pharmaceutical marketing, many would be hard-pressed to name an organization more committed to the interactive channel or more sophisticated in leveraging it than AstraZeneca. They outspend their peers by a healthy margin and often seem a step or two ahead of the pack. With this program, AstraZeneca leads again.

Best,

- James Gardner
Group Director/Life Sciences Practice Leader

Video Gamers Create Online Movies

We have begun to identify a number of trends associated with consumer generated media.  The following article, posted today on MediaPost, speaks of a new tool from Lionhead Studios that allows video game players to create their own content by manipulating the characters in video games and exporting them as media files that can be uploaded to Web sites like FilePlanet (http://www.fileplanet.com/themovies/).

Posted by Shankar Gupta on MediaPost, November 29, 2005:

"In the past, only the most hard-core video game players created machinima. Even so, marketers already have started placing ads against machinima. On the streaming video site Heavy.com, for instance, a machinima called "Pimp My Weapon," made from Sony's game "God of War," got six million streams in its first week.

The Lionhead tool, "The Movies," positions the player as a Hollywood studio owner. In addition to the business management aspect of the game, players can shoot their own movies--designing costumes, choosing sets, adding subtitles, and dubbing audio. The finished product can be uploaded to a community site run by Lionhead, sent to friends, or posted online.

Machinima have been growing in popularity with consumers this year--but, until recently, were the purview of game designers, who used the characters and engines they created to make comedic shorts. The medium really began taking off with "Red vs. Blue," a machinima created using the extremely popular video game "Halo" by a group of gaming enthusiasts working under the name Rooster Teeth Productions.

"It's been around since around '97 as a little cottage industry. Some of the game makers and developers would make goofy things out of their games, and that sort of spread out to people making things at home on their PlayStations and Xboxes," said David Carson, the co-CEO of Heavy.com. "It really got popularized by Rooster Teeth with their production of 'Red vs. Blue'--It's this very bizarre sort of 'Waiting for Godot' meets 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.'"

Carson added that machinima have slipped under the entertainment establishment, but have capitalized on the growing popularity of video games. "Nobody in Hollywood would've ever considered, 'Oh my God, this is great entertainment,' but people online say it is, and millions of people are watching it," he said. "The appeal is, it's all based out of video games. Anything that's a derivative of that game, people pay attention to it."

Carson applauded "The Movies'" attempt to bring the ability to create machinima to more people. "I think it's awesome to see real people making things just for themselves," he said. "When you put those up against entertainment that people have spent a bunch of money on, often you see stuff that people made in their living room being more popular."