Candies’ Co-op with Fergie Ferg

Candies recently announced its partnership with 3 time Grammy award-winning artist, Fergie for its Candie's brand fall advertising campaign. The entire line is available exclusively at Kohl's. Candies teamed up with the duchess to style her music video "Big Girls Don't Cry," which features everything Candie's… including all apparel, footwear, jewelry, sleepwear, hats and bedding.
The Candies TV spot will be a direct cut from the "Big Girls Don't Cry" music video and the print campaign will feature candid shots taken on set during the shoot. This is the first time a junior fashion brand has extracted their campaign from a music video. "Big Girls Don't Cry" is in the top five on Billboard's Hot 100 chart and among the top 10 most played videos on MTV and VH-1.

Giant Whisker

Norelco's new innovative campaign... check it out

Interscope Preps Artist-Branded Drinks, Readies Roster

Straight from my Daily Music News supscription:

Interscope Geffen A&M is now preparing a number of artist-branded drinks, according to an announcement issued this week. The initiative involves Drinks Americas Holdings, Ltd., a Connecticut-based company specializing in customized liquid concoctions. According to Interscope, a division of Universal Music Group, the companies will jointly develop artist concepts and marketing approaches, and share resulting profits. Drinks Americas has already launched a number of celebrity-branded beverages, including the Donald Trump-inspired Trump Super Premium Vodka and Willie Nelson's Old Whiskey River Bourbon. According to the company, the Trump concept is slated to sell 100,000 cases in its first year, a strong achievement.

For the Interscope partnership, specific artist names were not disclosed, though a number of potential tie-ins were tossed around. The celebrity branding possibilities include Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes, G-Unit, Daddy Yankee, Sheryl Crow, Enrique Iglesias, Chris Cornell, and Gwen Stefani, according to the label group. "There is a large opportunity here for both companies to generate substantial incremental revenue and profits and create valuable assets," said J. Patrick Kenny, chief executive of Drinks Americas. "One only needs to take note of the huge purchase prices recently paid by large beverage companies for new, icon-associated and proven brands to see the tremendous potential in the products to be developed through our venture with Interscope Geffen A&M."

2nd Life into 1st Life

I've been working on a pitch for the Foo Fighters to perform in Second Life. The question I have to keep asking myself is this: if only 500 to 1,000 avatars will see this performance, why are we doing this? They key is, therefore, to generate enough awareness OUTSIDE of Second Life to make a real impact on the band's image and consumer awareness.

In my search to bring Second Life into First Life, this video fits perfectly (this will only be funny if you've been in Second Life):

Norway Innovation

Ditlef represented the Nordic countries at our global Alicia Keys & Foo Fighters meetings last week in Los Angeles. Why Norway and not its much larger neighbor Sweden you ask? Well, first, because Ditlef is much better looking than Johan. Second, Ditlef has a twin brother and also twin sons so he knows all about equal representation and fair sharing. And third, because the Norwegians are super cool, as shown here in the coolest video ever made to lure children into the magical world of engineering (my son is 7, dies for trains and has watched this spot a hundred times).

Hydro is a Scandinavian producer of oil, gas and aluminum.

If they can make gas & oil interesting, music should be a no-brainer.

Thanks Ditlef!

Free?

Skint Records is currently running an interesting promotion and contest involving a free 10 track sampler for what’s to come later this year (including material from Fatboy Slim, Lo-Fidelity, and All-Stars). By signing up to receive the sampler, participants are automatically entered to win a free vacation. So what’s the motive?… not quite sure, but it doesn’t hurt to have email addresses, demographics and addresses for all interested listeners/potential buyers. To sign up, participants have to divulge their personal contact info etc. allowing Skint to further reach them about future releases.

iPhone

I think Apple is one of the greatest companies in the world. They are so clever and they are always one step ahead of everyone else. They are constantly setting the standard for where technology is and where it should be heading. The thing is, though, anyone could be doing exactly the same thing with their products. Apple's main goal, in whatever product they market, is to make the product easy to use for the consumer. If the product is easy to use, the consumer is much more comfortable with it and thats probably the second thing any consumer notices after the shocking whiteness of any apple product.

Recently, apple has decided to take a risk. They looked at cell phones, and realized they could do it better. The risk here is that they are already in the computer and mp3 markets, and when companies start to spread themselves too thin on vertical product branding, they sometimes cannot capture the market. However, Apple's stance is that they are introducing a new technology to the world through the touch screen, and they hope that people, who already trust their easy-to-use products and their phenomenal customer service, will trust them when they say they will revolutionize cell phones.

From a marketing standpoint, this commercial is brilliant. It is presented so simply. They tell you what you want, show you that their product has it, and puts it all to the perfect music score. It really gets you intrigued and excited about this mysterious product.

Fans First

Month's Top 10 Most-Liked New TV Spots

Consumers Like the Verizon Wireless Vcast Song ID Ad
Verizon's Vcast Song ID spot was the commercial most liked by viewers during the last month. See the full IAG lists of top-liked and top-recalled spots.

Kings of Leon T-Shirt contest

Hey everyone! My name is Eric Henry. I'm new to the Global Marketing department. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania last year, and I was consulting for a year before I finally wised up and came to the music industry! I really look forward to meeting all of you.

Anyway, I received an email today that I thought was an interesting concept and I wanted to share it with everyone. The Kings of Leon have started a contest to design their new tour t-shirt. Anyone can enter the contest and they can enter as often as they like. The grand prize winner gets an epiphone guitar signed by the band and a KoL prize-pack with tons of KoL merchandise and apparel with their design incorporated into it. There are also ten second prize winners who will receive the entire Kings of Leon RCA Records CD catalog.

What I find cool about this is the fact that the band members themselves will decide the winner. This brings them closer to their fan base. It gives the fans a chance to feel connected to the music they listen to on a different level. I think this is a great tactic that all bands should use. Getting the fans directly involved with the band makes them more willing to tell their friends about the band, and maybe, on some level, makes these fans feel worse about illegally downloading the content. The best way to start getting rid of illegal downloading is to at least get fans to buy the music of their favorite bands; the bands they are emotionally involved with.

Bob Marley's Exodus into Memory Stick Mode

New ideas in a digital age are crucial. How can we release and market digital music in a new and exciting way? …and how can we make hard copies so special that people will want to buy them, even though they already have the digital format? The creators of Bob Marley’s marketing and distribution plan for an upcoming anniversary release of Exodus, seem to have caught that vision. A limited edition of Exodus will be featured in a unique USB stick/dog tag mode, featuring 10 original songs from the album, in addition to other audio and video content, including three video tracks recorded at London’s Rainbow Theatre in June 1977. The original album will also be re-released in vinyl, which is a great selling point for a hard copy release.
Other merchandise available for the album's 30th anniversary include a commemorative CD, limited edition CD/DVD with concert footage, a commemorative book and a t-shirt based on the Exodus tour t-shirt.
Gotta think outside the box!

Lap Dancing - Anytime / Anywhere....

This advert is causing a small uproar in the UK and hitting the headlines creating a reach far beyond that of the original advert.

A marketing company is facing a fine of up to £2,500 after the silhouette of a naked lap dancer appeared on a field beneath a busy flight path in Surrey.

The 100,000 sq ft advert, promoting a lap dancing website, has been painted under a Gatwick Airport flight path.

Tandridge District Council said the advert was illegal and had been painted without proper planning permission.

Sports Media Gaming (SMG) has refused to get rid of it, and claimed it was "operating within its rights" as it could only be seen from the air and therefore didn't require council planning permission.

The 2nd Coming

2 weeks and counting down till the glory of the iPhone is upon us. Will it SINK or SWIM?

A clever take on it from TechCrunch this morning:

Webby Artists of the Year

The Beastie Boys are putting power back into the hands of their fans. The Boys were honored at the 11th Annual Webby Awards last night, June 5th in New York for their work on their, “Awesome, I F***ing Shot That.” The video was filmed entirely by dozens of audience members using hand-held cameras provided by the group, epitomizing the Internet's interactive spirit and foreshadowing the boom in user-generated video, which is really hot right now thanks to youtube and other related sites. The trio has also been a longtime advocate of flexible copyright rules that allow artists and fans to legally swap, share, and remix their music.

Who Is Today's Gamer? You Have No Idea

Once the Domain of Cellar-Dwelling Teenage Boys, Video Games Hook Fans From All Walks of Life.
Can you guess who's at the control of this video-game screen? If you said a teenager, you're only 17% right. In fact, it could be a senior citizen or a young kid, a fan of global multiplayer fantasy games, or a sudoku fiend. Online gaming, in particular, attracts a varied crowd of players.
Click on the link and see the spread from virtual shoppers, casual gamers, gamblers, penny pinchers, little kids, console owners, movers & shakers, women and the middle class.

Audi's Stolen A3

Called the Art of the Heist, a recent Audi campaign began with a fictionalized theft of an Audi A3 at a Manhattan dealership in late March. The company went so far as to stage the theft with a broken glass door at the dealership, police tape and placement of officers standing on guard at the alleged crime scene. Immediately, postings went up around New York and other cities inquiring information about the stolen vehicle. This was all part of an elaborate campaign that tapped into the world of Virtual Reality Gaming. The campaign began its second stage where players were given the chance to put together clues found in online footage of the heist on youtube, as well as placement in traditional print and TV ads. Each clue led the participants deeper into the game, with an estimated 125,000 players that followed the complete campaign. Similar to “Street Games,” this campaign is interactive and involves individuals on a much deeper level than any other type of ad. Think, if the right combination of components were successfully intertwined, this could be the next big thing for the masses. The key is finding something that is completely captivating and engaging. Otherwise, the general public will choose to use their time more wisely.

NewsBreaker

"NewsBreaker" is msnbc.com's version of Blackberry's "Brickbraker" on a MUCH larger screen: a MOVIE THEATER screen. The game was launched last week at the premier of Spiderman 3 in Los Angeles. Played by the audience as a pre-movie promotion for msnbc, the game is the essence of "thinking out of the box".