GoDaddy.com is renowned for its risque Super Bowl spots, but it is taking that attitude into the broadband arena with a videopodcast at www.Frenchmaidtv.com. Frenchmaidtv, the brain child of Tim Street, is a series of how-to videopodcasts in which three scantily clad French maids teach viewers how to perform tasks such as registering domain names, which is where GoDaddy comes in.
“It’s goofy Benny Hill comedy that explains a variety of services, so it’s ideal for companies like GoDaddy to reach 18-34 year old males,” Street said. He founded Frenchmaidtv in 2005 and ran a few non-ad supported videopodcasts on iTunes, which were highly rated. “It got the ball rolling and we’re in business now,” he said.
He works with Podtrac, the podcasting network that sells ads to major companies. Mark McCrery, CEO and co-founder of Podtrac, sold Frenchmaidtv to GoDaddy. “It’s a great environment for advertisers to get their messages across to a target audience, especially when it comes to technical services that are complex for users,” McCrery said.
The format of the videopodcasts is two to four-minute episodes that start with casual shots of the maids before they begin their how-to lesson, which is told in alluring French accents with on-screen graphics that illustrate the steps.
Street says the main challenge in producing the videopodcasts is to name them so they will be found through videopodcast search. “Clients often want to use the name of the product, but people don’t always search by product name,” he said. “We chose ‘How to Register a Domain Name’ for GoDaddy and once we had that I wrote the script and sent it to GoDaddy and Podtrac for comments. We shot it in a hotel room with some location shots as well.”
Barb Rechterman, executive VP of marketing for GoDaddy, says she relies on podcasters to create their own programs. “We let them be the creative force because they’re able to cater their content to their audience. It’s safe for us because it’s coming from the heart of the podcasters. We guided the creative copy with Frenchmaidtv, but aside from that it’s all coming from them,” she said.
“The uniqueness of the voice of the podcast” is its highlight, according to Rechterman. “You can’t get it on TV, because it’s all scripted acting.”
Frenchmaidtv’s videopodcasts play on iTunes and Frenchmaidtv.com. GoDaddy’s also plays on its website (click “View all others” and “Our customers.”)
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