Online product placement takes a step forward on AOL, which is playing three new broadband video programs that incorporate GMC vehicles into the action. The shows, which started running Jan. 16 on AOL’s Living Channel, were created by AOL through a partnership with GMC under the direction of GMC’s agency, Digitas/Boston.
“You might see Tyler going shopping and putting the veggies in the Yukon,” an AOL spokeswoman said of a product placement sequence, which occurs on “Cooking with Tyler Florence,” a show that stars the celebrity chef and the GMC Yukon.
Three GMC vehicles are integrated into the campaign–the Yukon, the Acadia and the Sierra, and each is used exclusively on one of the shows, “Cooking,” “Home Entertainment with Michele and Gia” and “Home Improvement with Eric Strommer.”
The shows run three to five minutes, they are free to view and 78 have been created for the GMC program that will run for a year, according to the AOL spokeswoman.
The advertising also includes pre-rolls in front of the shows and sidebar videos, which are tips relating to show topics that are labeled GMC Trade Secrets. One hundred twenty Trade Secrets, 40 for each show, were created. They run about a minute each. The tips include their own “pre-rolls,” short intro clips in which the talent interacts with the vehicle. “It communicates the brand message and it’s a tie in between the brand and the show’s relevant content,” said Sean Kegelman, VP/director of marketing at Digitas.
Kegelman said the sidebar videos will be used on their own. “We’ll play them on video syndication sites like Google and YouTube and podcasts with messages that will draw them back to AOL.”
Digitas created the pre-rolls and sidebar videos from existing footage from TV commercials and new footage shot with the talent from the shows, Kegelman said. AOL produced the shows.
“We believe the Trade Secrets campaign will enable us to connect to our consumers on a more emotional level than traditional advertising,” said Mary Kubitskey, GMC advertising manager. “They’ll actually have the ability to interact with our brands. Also, GMC owns the rights to these assets, so throughout the year these vignettes can be repurposed for different uses.”
Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Cartoonist and Writer, Dies At 95
Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and writer whose prolific output ranged from a long-running comic strip to plays, screenplays and children's books, died Friday. He was 95 and, true to his seemingly tireless form, published his last book just four months ago.
Feiffer's wife, writer JZ Holden, said Tuesday that he died of congestive heart failure at their home in Richfield Springs, New York, and was surrounded by friends, the couple's two cats and his recent artwork.
Holden said her husband had been ill for a couple of years, "but he was sharp and strong up until the very end. And funny."
Artistically limber, Feiffer hopscotched among numerous forms of expression, chronicling the curiosity of childhood, urban angst and other societal currents. To each he brought a sharp wit and acute observations of the personal and political relations that defined his readers' lives.
As Feiffer explained to the Chicago Tribune in 2002, his work dealt with "communication and the breakdown thereof, between men and women, parents and children, a government and its citizens, and the individual not dealing so well with authority."
Feiffer won the United States' most prominent awards in journalism and filmmaking, taking home a 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons and "Munro," an animated short film he wrote, won a 1961 Academy Award. The Library of Congress held a retrospective of his work in 1996.
"My goal is to make people think, to make them feel and, along the way, to make them smile if not laugh," Feiffer told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998. "Humor seems to me one of the best ways of espousing ideas. It gets people to listen with their guard down."
Feiffer was born on Jan. 26, 1929, in the Bronx. From... Read More