In a departure from its traditional print advertising, Specialized Bicycles is inviting customers to the “ride-in” movies in its latest advertising endeavor. With the help of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco, the company has launched a new Web site, www.specialized movies.com, dedicated to films featuring various bike models.
“Historically print advertising has been our biggest marketing channel. Currently, I can confidently say that the Web is our single most important means of communicating with our customers,” said Sean McLaughlin, who is responsible for global marketing at Specialized. “If you were to turn the clock back let’s say three to five years that would not have been the case. The balance has definitely shifted towards the interactive side.”
He said this shift comes with the goal of reaching out to a new audience, casual cyclists who are not familiar with Specialized or people who don’t ride yet but are interested in becoming cyclists.
“One of the goals for this was to reach an audience we otherwise might not be able to talk to. When we look at our print advertising, Specialized is a relatively small business and we don’t have the ad placement budget to put ads in Newsweek or Time. So when it comes to print media we’re pretty confined to cycling enthusiast publications–and that audience is one that we have been talking with and to for a long time. Hopefully with the Web we can get the brand and some of our exciting products out in front of people that otherwise might have been out of our reach.”
Because Specialized is such a hip brand, it made perfect sense to Rich Silverstein, founding partner of GS&P and one of the creative directors for the films, to have advertising that could be a part of popular culture, which these days includes YouTube and Google Videos.
“What’s great about having this new phenomenon of a film that’s good enough to be passed on is it proves the work is good or not. Just in two weeks’ time they’ve had hundreds of thousands of people see the films, pass them around and visit the Specialized Web site. Everything I wanted it to be is happening right now,” Silverstein said.
Adds McLaughlin, “We are able to track how many people downloaded the films and/or forwarded them to a friend. This has been very successful thus far, but many people who have seen the films have come across them on one of the popular video sites such as youtube.com, metacafe.com, or video.google.com.
“The films have been downloaded by users, modified and re-posted to various sites in various forms, so tracking the actual number of views is pretty much impossible. However, the fact that people are interacting with them so much is a clear indication to us that they’re working. The films are interesting and entertaining enough to be ‘pirated.'”
To guarantee people would download the Specialized films or forward them to a friend, Silverstein relied on just the right dosage of shock, humor and drama for the first two films. Two more are in the works.
The animated “Happy Entrails,” directed by Tom Koh of Blind, Inc., Santa Monica, which stars the Stumpjumper FSR, has the feel of a Saturday morning cartoon that went wrong–the key to the effectiveness being the element of surprise from an unexpected turn for the gory. Working in pen and pencil, the Blind team created a world that resembled an innocent children’s cartoon, but at the same time was inhabited by a dangerous cast of characters. Blind used traditional cell-animation for the majority of the characters. Additional motion, such as the fire, was done with 3D applications Studio Max and Maya.
The happy-go-lucky rider endures hazards such as a rock slide, a bear, lightning, piranhas, fire-throwing bunnies and some devilish Girl Scouts. Smiling all the way, he proves that fun can be had on pretty much any ride given the right bike. The final blood-splattered scene directs viewers to the Specialized Web site.
In “Outlaw in Lycra,” directed by Dave Laden of Teak Motion Visuals, San Francisco, viewers witness a high-speed police chase involving the S-Works Roubaix SL, Specialized’s super fast road bike.
“We studied a lot of chases in LA. There’s no shortage of them,” Silverstein said with a laugh. “We found one that we could play around with that we felt could work with bicycles. We removed cars and put bikes in using green screen. There’s a lot of special effects.”
In addition to being able to download or forward the films, visitors to www.specializedmovies.com can click around to find out details about the bikes’ features, download specs and find a dealer, which drives them to Specialized Bicycles’ main Web site. Silverstein is pleased by the recent surge in first-time visitors to the site.
“The most rewarding thing about the project is we told Specialized that this is a new way to advertise and we’re proving to them it works,” Silverstein said. “This shows numbers. People have gone to the Web site who have never gone before. It’s totally proven.
“What is also gratifying is the people who worked on the project put their heart into it just as much as if it would have been a $300,000 or $500,000 production. I think production can only get more fun because there is so much opportunity.”
Hollywood’s Oscar Season Turns Into A Pledge Drive In Midst Of L.A. Wildfires
When the Palisades Fire broke out in Los Angeles last Tuesday, Hollywood's awards season was in full swing. The Golden Globes had transpired less than 48 hours earlier and a series of splashy awards banquets followed in the days after.
But the enormity of the destruction in Southern California has quickly snuffed out all festiveness in the movie industry's high season of celebration. At one point, the flames even encroached on the hillside above the Dolby Theatre, the home of the Academy Awards.
The fires have struck at the very heart of a movie industry still trying to stabilize itself after years of pandemic, labor turmoil and technological upheaval. Not for the first time this decade, the Oscars are facing the question of: Should the show go on? And if it does, what do they mean now?
"With ALL due respect during Hollywood's season of celebration, I hope any of the networks televising the upcoming awards will seriously consider NOT televising them and donating the revenue they would have gathered to victims of the fires and the firefighters," "Hacks" star Jean Smart, a recent Globe winner, wrote on Instagram.
The Oscars remain as scheduled, but it's certain that they will be transformed due to the wildfires, and that most of the red-carpet pomp that typically stretches between now and then will be curtailed if not altogether canceled. With so many left without a home by the fires, there's scant appetite for the usual self-congratulatory parades of the season.
Focus has turned, instead, to what the Oscars might symbolize for a traumatized Los Angeles. The Oscars have never meant less, but, at the same time, they might be more important than ever as a beacon of perseverance for the reeling movie capital.
The film academy... Read More