Archive for November, 2007

  • Cherry Chocolate Rain

    Posted by Mark Schoneveld on November 29th, 2007. Categories: Our News | 3 Comments »

    Well, we didn’t think it would take this long, but Internet viral sensation Tay Zonday turned his viral hit song and video “Chocolate Rain” into a pretty… um… well, it’s out there… commercial for Dr. Pepper’s new soda beverage they’re calling Cherry Chocolate, er, Rain. OMG.

    [tags]tay zonday, cherry chocolate rain, dr. pepper, viral, video, advertising[/tags]

  • Creative Inspiration: Making Boring Better

    Posted by Mark Schoneveld on November 28th, 2007. Categories: Creative Inspiration | No Comments »

    Making the mundane details in life a little brighter is a great way to start off a better brand experience. This is the new in-flight video from Virgin Atlantic. It was created by an agency called Anomaly, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but man, it’s pretty entertaining. As Karl Long at ExperienceCurve points out, “The message that they manage to get across here of course is ‘if we tried harder to make this video bearable imagine what we’ll do to improve the rest of the experience’.” Thanks, AdFreak.

    In a slightly different vein, I dig this spot pointed out by Steve Hall at AdRants. The folks behind StunMedia were getting a bit bored on the set of a photo shoot for Silver Jeans when they decided to ease their boredom a bit by shooting some video. The end result? A pretty compelling spec spot for the brand.

    You could do that!

    [tags]creativity, creative inspiration, video, adfreak, anomaly, stun media, silver jeans, boredom[/tags]

  • Using Video to Expand Business

    Posted by Mark Schoneveld on November 26th, 2007. Categories: Uncategorized | No Comments »

    The Wall Street Journal’s Raymund Flandez delves into marketing with online video today in a piece called “Lights! Camera! Sales!: How to Use Video to Expand your Business in a YouTube World“. He highlights a number of successful video series that help market small businesses of all shapes and sizes. A bunch of our favorites made the article (MAKE’s Weekend Projects and Will it Blend?), but it introduced us to some new ones as well (Val’s Art Diary and Free Range Root Beer).

    For all the hype this article lends to the viral video trend, Nalts points out that it’s not perfect. He’s up in arms about a few of the specifics they mention, and he’s right on the money in his critique. Make sure to read it. He went ahead and wrote up his own excellent list of pointers to using web video to grow your business. For example:

    To get a decent ROI, you need to keep your costs down. Otherwise you’re going to have a tough time capturing measurable value that offsets a $50-$500K pilot. You can dip your toe in the water for just thousands simply by partnering with known “weblebrities” who often promote products and services for a small fee, and already have an established audience. A few grand with a weblebrity gets you a video, their halo effect, and nearly guaranteed views of 10-100K. That same amount will get you an afternoon of a large agency fees.

    Nalts is always the great resource for all things viral. Check out his blog for more tips like these:

    ‘Course, in this day in age, you could always just cheat.

    [tags]video, advertising, business, promotion, marketing, guerilla, nalts, wsj[/tags]

  • Apple’s New Almost-Video Ads

    Posted by Mark Schoneveld on November 21st, 2007. Categories: Uncategorized | No Comments »

    Apple’s getting clever with new rich media banner ads. They’re pretty much videos, but they’re actually banner ads. Very clever. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of this in the coming months. Both from Apple and from others as video advertising becomes more commonplace. Crazy that the YouTube clip showing the banner ad has already gotten over 30,000 views in 24 hours. Wow. Think about that for a second. Talk about viral!

    [Thanks, TechCrunch]

    [tags]advertising, apple, mac, xlntads, funny, innovation, banner[/tags]

  • Saved By The Cell Winners!

    Posted by Mark Schoneveld on November 20th, 2007. Categories: Our News | No Comments »

    We’ve got a winner! The top award of $500 for Saved By The Cell goes to:

    destertctiy for their piece Cell Phone Magic about how cell phones can keep you out of trouble with the boss. Great stuff. Congratulations, Susan!

    Major props to the other amazing videos that we chose out as finalists:

    Nature Calls by davelaird
    True Story by hollermedia
    it’s also a phone by lgabriel

    Congratulations, everyone! We love you. Make great ads!

    [tags]xlntads, news, video, contest, saved by the cell, winners, announcement[/tags]

  • Get Your Show Idea Funded

    Posted by Mark Schoneveld on November 19th, 2007. Categories: Our News | No Comments »

    For some time now, you’ve been making all kinds of great commercials with us. Short ones, tall ones, skinny ones, fat ones. And it’s been fun! But we just got this killer opportunity the other day. We’re setting up a private screening for your show ideas (in the form of pilots and trailers) at the iMedia Agency Summit. This is a big deal. Basically, we’re getting the chance to show your best work to the top advertising agencies in the world!

    We’d love to see what you’ve got and have you part of this opportunity. These shows can be about anything. Niche-focused or for a broad audience. Funny, serious, whatever. But they’ve got to be good, and they’ve got to have focus.

    But we don’t have long! The Summit is being held during the first few days of December, so we need to have your vids by November 30th. These videos don’t have to be brand new (though that would be nice). We’d love to see one of your best shows from the recent past. What we’d like to do is option the video for a short period of time then sell the best ideas for prodcution with one of these agencies. You could get $30,000 to produce six episodes of your show!

    Head over to “The Amazing Pitch” to sign up and learn more about this project and submit you brilliant videos (’cuz I know you got ‘em!).

    [tags]xlntads, the amazing pitch, ideas, video, show, podcasts[/tags]

  • My 5 Seconds of Fame on GETV

    Posted by Mark Schoneveld on November 15th, 2007. Categories: Our News | No Comments »

    The lovely Irina Slutsky of Geek Entertainment TV interviewed me here at the NewTeeVee Live conference, and I got my 5 seconds of fame. Sa-weet! I gotta hand it to her, though, she could only pick a handful of folks to interview from the 500+ attendees of the conference. I’m glad I was one of them! Thanks, Irina! Hope to be on the show again soon.

    [tags]newteevee, newteeveelive, geek entertainment tv, getv, video[/tags]

  • NewTeeVee LIVE: Television Reinvented

    Posted by Mark Schoneveld on November 14th, 2007. Categories: Our News | No Comments »

    Fun at New Tee Vee
    [from L to R: Yuri Baranovsky of Break a Leg TV, Irina Slutsky of GeekEntertainmentTV, and Steve Garfield's hand/Nokia N95 of Off on a Tangent]

    There are a ton of people here at the NewTeeVee LIVE conference in San Francisco. I’ve had some really great converstations with some cool people, and got filmed on a couple of excellent tech video blogs. I’ll share as soon as they’re up. Stay tuned!

    Check out come of the coverage of the speakers and panel discussions over on the NewTeeVee blog.

    [tags]newteeveelive, newteevee, video, conference, media, tv, new media[/tags]