Standard Alliance, a San Francisco-based interactive television (iTV) production company, has teamed with AOL TV, motion picture studio New Line Cinema and Web-based ticket fulfillment partner Moviefone to create what’s being billed as the first broad-based iTV application for the purchase of movie theater tickets.
Viewers with an AOL TV or a WebTV set-top box can buy tickets via an interactive template on televised commercials promoting the New Line Cinema film Blow, starring Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz. The enhanced spots debuted earlier this month (4/6) in conjunction with the film’s release.
The iTV application represents a convergent initiative that’s been deployed as a result of the AOL/Time Warner merger. AOL/Time Warner owns Moviefone and New Line Cinema.
Broadcast ads for Blow contain a small interactive alert that can be accessed in households equipped with AOL TV or WebTV set-top boxes. If the viewer—who can continue to watch passively—opts to engage the interactive opportunity via his or her TV remote control unit, a frame around the broadcast image is activated. This enables the viewer to enter home zip code information to access a list of neighborhood theaters where Blow is playing, along with scheduled screening times. Once a movie house and screening time have been selected, the viewer can buy a ticket or tickets, which will be waiting at the theater box office. Or the viewer could choose to receive info via e-mail to possibly purchase tickets at a later time.
integration
Standard Alliance created the interface design and the server solution for managing and maintaining requests generated by the iTV initiative. The company also engineered the application to integrate iTV into the Moviefone database fulfillment system. It’s estimated that AOL TV and WebTV together reach slightly fewer than 3 million U.S. households.
Tom Pollock, president of Standard Alliance, believes that "this motion picture ticket purchasing application will create much greater consumer awareness for the benefits of interactive television, and will help to push the industry forward." Pollock alluded to the New Line project during last month’s SHOOT-sponsored Producers Conference in San Francisco, a two-day gathering (3/29-30) of ad agency heads of production, executive producers and producers, both staff and freelance. At that time, however, he wasn’t at liberty to publicly discuss details of the Blow assignment.
Instead, Pollock participated in a Producers Conference case study of last year’s integrated campaign—entailing broadcast spots, iTV and the Internet—for Rock The Vote via Collaborate, a San Francisco ad agency co-founded by partner/creative director Robin Raj. The overall campaign was produced by San Francisco-based convergent-media company Mekanism, a joint venture of production house Pandemonium and visual effects studio Western Images, both in San Francisco. Standard Alliance produced the iTV application part of the Rock The Vote package, facilitating voter registration.
During the course of the Producers Conference, other opportunities for advertisers to test the iTV medium emerged. For example, Debby Mullin, VP of new media advertising development at Atlanta-headquartered Cox Communications, spoke at an earlier SHOOT panel, relating that Cox is about to launch an iTV test initiative in the San Diego market. She urged the agency creative community to tap into this and/or other test opportunities, reasoning that they can give participating ad shops a leg up when iTV penetration eventually reaches critical mass.
Mullin opined that the promise of iTV goes well beyond producing spots with interactive overlays. She cited Video On Demand (VOD) as an overlooked application. A broadcast spot or program could lead iTV viewers to request related VOD content, which can be instantaneously accessed. For example, a consumer in the market to buy a car could instantly see running footage of a particular make or model of automobile, accompanied by pertinent product info. Or an advertiser might simply choose to sponsor and have its agency create VOD content that’s less sales oriented. Mullin noted that an advertiser could maintain a VOD channel of quality programming, ranging from documentaries to concerts to short films and episodic series.
Producers Conference panelist Steve Armstrong—creative director/editor at Santa Monica-based editorial/design boutique ARTiFACT, and a partner (with director Peter Kagan) in ARTiFACT+itv, Santa Monica (SHOOT, 8/18/00, p. 1)—described VOD as "the hidden killer interactive TV application" for advertisers. Mullin and Armstrong concurred that agency creatives and producers are in a position to define a new space with short- and longform content that can help to offset the zap factor, whereby a steadily increasing number of TV viewers fast-forward through or eliminate commercials.
