'Idol' Sponsors Coke, Ford, AT&T Paying More

Coca-Cola, Ford and AT&T are back again as the three main sponsors of Fox's megahit American Idol, but it’s going to cost them.

The three are forking over roughly $35 million each for the opportunity to be featured in America's most watched TV show, as well as air commercials during Idol, post online content and run off-air co-branded marketing programs.

The $35 million price tag is up slightly from the estimated $30 million the sponsors spent last season, but the advertisers are likely to get an even better return on their costly investment than they had hoped for. With the writers strike having shut down production on most original scripted programming, Idol—which premieres Tuesday night—is expected to be an even bigger ratings juggernaut than ever.

As far as this season's integrations, Ford, Coca-Cola and AT&T will for the most part be repeating their in-show performances from years past, with a few new revisions in either content or products featured.

Ford, which will again be featuring its vehicles in music videos with the final 12 contestants that air during the show, will be seeking to incorporate its Ford Escape Hybrid into the program this season. While the final details of Ford's integration have not yet been decided, Ford will give away Hybrids to the two top finalists instead of the Ford Mustangs it has awarded in years past.

"As all of Hollywood and the world is going green and looking at more environmental initiatives, I wouldn't be surprised to see more involvement creatively from the Ford Escape Hybrid in American Idol," said Bob Witter, Ford global brand entertainment manager.

Ford is also planning to heavily promote its new crossover vehicle the Ford Edge in this season's Idol as well as its new Sync voice-activated communications and entertainment system for mobile phones and digital music players, which was developed with Microsoft.

Coca-Cola will be back with its branded cups on the judges' table, the Coca-Cola red room where the Idol contestants are interviewed by host Ryan Seacrest and hang out backstage, and Coke graphics on the LCD flat screen that sits behind contestants on stage as they are being interviewed by Seacrest.

Coca-Cola spokeswoman Susan Stribling said the red room will be refreshed with some new design elements and the flat screen images on stage will be updated as well with "Coke Side of Life" graphics.

AT&T, which is believed to reap the greatest benefits of all the partners from its sponsorship of the text message voting every week, as well as Idol downloads, ringtones and even video of bad auditions and performances last year, is expected to be back with very similar on-air and off-air elements to its campaign. "We're delighted to be back," said AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel. "It's a great partnership and sponsorship for us."

While the writers strike may deliver stronger ratings than ever for Idol, Ford, Coke and AT&T—all major network advertisers—are losing out overall, with the strike causing ratings shortfalls in other shows in which they may be running spots or be integrated.

Nestle is also back for the second year as an off-air promotional partner. Other off-air partnerships are expected to be announced in the coming weeks. Last year, Fremantle lined up six promotional partners including McDonald's, Samsung, Pringles and Dreyer's, all of whom are believed to have paid over $1 million for the rights to feature Idol branding on their packaging, products and marketing programs.

This year, Nestle announced an on-pack "Idol Elimination" game promotion offering fans the chance to win $1 million if they correctly choose who will be eliminated each week from the top 24 contestants. Specially marked packages of Nestle candy bars will feature a code that allows fans to play the game online at www.americanidol.com.

Link to BrandWeek Article

How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life

For months, Michael Donnelly had been hearing all about the fantastic opportunities in Second Life.

As worldwide head of interactive marketing at Coca-Cola, Donnelly was fascinated by its commercial potential, the way its users could wander through a computer-generated 3-D environment that mimics the mundane world of the flesh. So one day last fall, he downloaded the Second Life software, created an avatar, and set off in search of other brands like his own. American Apparel, Reebok, Scion — the big ones were easy to find, yet something felt wrong: "There was nobody else around." He teleported over to the Aloft Hotel, a virtual prototype for a real-world chain being developed by the owners of the W. It was deserted, almost creepy. "I felt like I was in The Shining."

Yet Donnelly decided to put money into Second Life anyway. He's no digital naïf: When he joined Coke last summer, the company was being ridiculed for its huffy response to a spate of Web videos showing the soda geysers that erupt when you drop Mentos into Diet Coke. Within weeks, Donnelly had Coke and Mentos sponsoring a contest on Google Video that's gotten more than 5.6 million views. But Second Life was different. "Many places you go, there's still nobody there," he concedes. That's certainly the case with Coke's Virtual Thirst pavilion, where you can long linger without encountering another avatar. "But my job is to invest in things that have never been done before. So Second Life was an obvious decision."

As with Donnelly and Coca-Cola, so with David Stern and the National Basketball Association. Stern, who's been NBA commissioner since 1984, was introduced to Second Life in July 2006, at the annual media and technology retreat hosted by New York investment banker Herbert Allen in Sun Valley, Idaho. Second Life's creator, Philip Rosedale, was one of the presenters, as was Chad Hurley, cofounder of YouTube, another company Stern had never heard of. "My initial impression was, 'Don't people have better things to do with their lives?' Then I said, 'Stupid! You're not the audience.'"

Stern left Sun Valley convinced he'd seen the future, and he was about half right. YouTube has become a powerful tool for pro basketball. The site's NBA channel, launched in February, has already garnered some 14,000 subscribers; users have posted more than 60,000 NBA videos, which have been viewed 23 million times. But over at Second Life, where an elaborate NBA island went up in May, the action has been a bit slower. "I think we've had 1,200 visitors," Stern reports. "People tell us that's very, very good. But I can't say we have very precise expectations. We just want to be there."

Coke and the NBA are hardly alone. Adrift in the uncharted sea that is Web 2.0 — YouTube, MySpace, social networking, user-generated content, virtual worlds — corporate marketers look at Second Life and see something to grab onto. At least 50 major companies have ventured into the virtual world to date, spending millions in the process. IBM has created a massive complex of adjoining islands dedicated to recruitment, employee training, and in-world business meetings. Coldwell Banker has opened a virtual real estate office. Brands like Adidas, H&R Block, and Sears have set up shop. CNET and Reuters have opened virtual bureaus there. It's as if the moon suddenly had oxygen. Nobody wants to miss out.

Ever since BusinessWeek ran a breathless cover story titled "My Virtual Life" more than a year ago, reporters have been heralding Second Life as the here-and-now incarnation of the fictional Metaverse that Neal Stephenson conjured up 15 years ago in Snow Crash. (Wired created a 12-page "Travel Guide" last fall.) Unfortunately, the reality doesn't justify the excitement.

Second Life partisans claim meteoric growth, with the number of "residents," or avatars created, surpassing 7 million in June. There's no question that more and more people are trying Second Life, but that figure turns out to be wildly misleading. For starters, many people make more than one avatar. According to Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, the number of avatars created by distinct individuals was closer to 4 million. Of those, only about 1 million had logged on in the previous 30 days (the standard measure of Internet traffic), and barely a third of that total had bothered to drop by in the previous week. Most of those who did were from Europe or Asia, leaving a little more than 100,000 Americans per week to be targeted by US marketers.

Then there's the question of what people do when they get there. Once you put in several hours flailing around learning how to function in Second Life, there isn't much to do. That may explain why more than 85 percent of the avatars created have been abandoned. Linden's in-world traffic tally, which factors in both the number of visitors and time spent, shows that the big draws for those who do return are free money and kinky sex. On a random day in June, the most popular location was Money Island (where Linden dollars, the official currency, are given away gratis), with a score of 136,000. Sexy Beach, one of several regions that offer virtual sex shops, dancing, and no-strings hookups, came in at 133,000. The Sears store on IBM's Innovation Island had a traffic score of 281; Coke's Virtual Thirst pavilion, a mere 27. And even when corporate destinations actually draw people, the PR can be less than ideal. Last winter, CNET's in-world correspondent was conducting a live interview with Anshe Chung, an avatar said to have earned more than $1 million on virtual real estate deals, when Chung was assaulted by flying penises in a griefer attack.

One of the things you never see in Second Life is a genuine crowd — largely because the technology makes it impossible. In Stephenson's Metaverse, corporations established their presence along a bustling, almost infinitely long street that residents could cruise at will. Second Life is different. Created by an underfunded startup using a physics engine that's now years out of date, Second Life is made up of thousands of disconnected "regions" (read: processors), most of which remain invisible unless you explicitly search for them by name. Residents can reach these places only by teleporting into the void. And even the popular islands are never crowded, because each processor on Linden Lab's servers can handle a maximum of only 70 avatars at a time; more than that and the service slows to a crawl, some avatars disappear, or the island simply vanishes. "It's really the software's fault," says Andrew Meadows, Linden Lab's senior developer. "Way back when, we used to say, 'This is not going to scale.'"

Blank new world: Desolate corporate headquarters in second life.
Illustrations by Eddie Guy

And yet, so eager are corporate marketers to get in that a small industry has sprung up to help. Business appears to be good — very good. "We have basically not made any sales calls," says Sibley Verbeck, founder and CEO of the Electric Sheep Company, which has built in-world presences for such clients as AOL, Major League Baseball, the NBA, Nissan, Pontiac, and Sony BMG Music. "We would like to. But we can hardly keep up with the Fortune 500 companies that are contacting us."

From an obscure background in computational linguistics, Verbeck has emerged as perhaps the world's leading evangelist for Second Life business opportunities. Dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, his long, dark hair flowing from beneath a wide-brimmed black hat, he looks like a diminutive New Age lumberjack. But Verbeck is also oddly charismatic, with an almost messianic belief in the potential of virtual worlds.

Electric Sheep launched with the mission of promoting Second Life by developing software to make the experience less clunky and off-putting. Bringing in big corporations was a way of generating money and adding new in-world attractions. Marketers weren't interested at first, but that changed after the May 2006 BusinessWeek story and Rosedale's appearance at Sun Valley a couple of months later. "By September, it was crazy," says Giff Constable, an investment banker who joined Electric Sheep after falling in love with Second Life. "A lot of people who missed MySpace said, 'You know what? We shouldn't let that happen again.'"

What do marketers want when they call Electric Sheep? "They don't know," Verbeck says. "Mostly it's 'We've been reading about virtual worlds — is there anything there for us?'" Almost inevitably, the answer is yes. The cost varies greatly: A company can stage an in-world speaking event for as little as $10,000, but hiring Electric Sheep or one of its competitors to create a full-time presence, with a private island and a lot of virtual construction, could run several hundred thousand dollars a year. (Linden Lab leases virtual land to cover its server costs but doesn't take a cut of what companies spend establishing their presence there.) Opt for a really elaborate build, hold frequent events to keep people coming back, and hire an employee or two to keep things running, and the budget could easily hit $500,000 a year.

Joseph Jaffe, the marketing consultant who advised Coke on its in-world presence, dismisses the notion that such efforts might not be worthwhile. "The learning is now," Jaffe says. "You are a pioneer, and with that comes first-mover advantage" — that chestnut from the Web 1.0 boom. And the paltry numbers? "This is not about reach anymore. This is about connecting. It's about establishing meaningful, impactful conversations. So when people ask, 'Why Second Life?' I ask 'Why not?'"

Jaffe logs on to show off Coke's Virtual Thirst pavilion, which was created by Millions of Us, a Bay Area company that does in-world builds. He's a close match for his avatar, Divo Dapto, a trim little figure clad in roll-up jeans and a red-on-white Virtual Thirst T-shirt. "You never know who you're going to meet," Jaffe says as Dapto soars toward the Virtual Thirst pavilion.

The Coke build is expansive, elaborate, and of course empty. But Coca-Cola has a plan. It's sponsoring a contest to create a Virtual Thirst vending machine that it hopes will become ubiquitous in Second Life, just as Coke machines are everywhere in real life. Jaffe professes to be overwhelmed by the number of entries, which he characterizes as "well north of 100."

Suddenly, another avatar materializes. "Ah, there you go," Jaffe exclaims. "Someone's just arrived! I think she's from Japan." As he speaks, Dapto starts air-typing in the weird way that Second Life avatars do, trying to chat up the new Japanese girl. She looks around, then teleports someplace else.

You might wonder what Coke is doing in such a place. "It had a lot to do with hype," admits Michael Donnelly.

Still, despite isolated reports of corporate dissatisfaction with Second Life, the influx continues. Electric Sheep claims to be turning away business. IBM has set up a virtual worlds business unit. Millions of Us, which has also built corporate presences for Intel, Microsoft, Sun, and — full disclosure — Wired, is constructing a virtual Hollywood Hills for show business companies.

What's behind this stampede is not that hard to divine. "A terror has gripped corporate America," says Joseph Plummer, chief research officer at the Advertising Research Foundation, an industry think tank. Plummer has been around Madison Avenue since the early '60s, when modern advertising techniques materialized. "The simple model they all grew up with" — the 30-second spot, delivered through the mass reach of television — "is no longer working. And there are two types of people out there: a small group that's experimenting thoughtfully, and a large group that's trying the next thing to come through the door." Second Life appeals to the latter — the ones who are afraid of missing out, who don't consider half a million dollars to be a lot of money, and who haven't figured out (or don't want to admit) that Second Life is less than the bold new frontier it appears to be.

"For people who've grown up in analog, Second Life is not that hard to understand," says Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Denuo, a consulting arm of the global ad giant Publicis Groupe. "I have a store in the real world; I have a store in the virtual world." In contrast, the kind of digital marketing that actually works requires a conceptual leap. Successful online marketing is targeted and specific, like direct mail — but it's direct mail in a fun house, where the recipients can easily seize control of what the mail says, where it goes next, and how it gets there. You need to know how to buy up keywords to maximize search returns, how to make the most of recommendation engines, how to use the viral potential of Web video, how to monitor what's being said in blogs and message boards, how not to blow it by trying to be deceptive. Building a corporate pavilion in Second Life doesn't require any of these things. It's simple and it's obvious.

Virtual worlds will evolve, of course. It's easy to imagine targeted in-world advertising, for example, or a 3-D version of MySpace. Although it won't comment officially, IBM is understood to be working to create a "virtual universe" by building software that will allow avatars to leap from Second Life to World of Warcraft as easily as we now move from Google to Yahoo. The Internet will eventually be full of such 3-D environments; Second Life might even be one of them. But in the meantime, it's just slurping up corporate dollars and delivering little in return.

"Companies say, 'It's an experiment' — but what are they learning?" Tobaccowala asks. "Basically, they're learning how to create an avatar and walk around in Second Life." Which is fine if that's what you want to do. Just don't expect to sell a lot of Coke.

Link to Wired Article

Coca-Cola Is Voted Best Brand; Sony Slips Out of the Top Spot

Coca-Cola Co. topped the list of Harris Interactive's annual poll of "best brands" for the first time, as Sony Corp. slipped from the top spot, where it sat for seven straight years.

To compile the list, Harris surveyed 2,372 adults online, asking them to consider the brands of products and services they were familiar with and name the three they considered the best. Harris tallied the number of times brands were mentioned and used those figures to rank them. Respondents weren't read or shown a list of brand names, Harris says.

Some brands on the list moved little from the previous year's poll. For example, Toyota MotorDell Inc. dropped to fourth from second place last year. Corp. inched up to third place from fourth last year, while

Others -- such as Kraft Foods Inc. -- did gain significant traction among respondents in this year's poll. Kraft climbed to sixth place in this year's poll from ninth place last year. Honda Motor Co. fell to 10th place from sixth.

Other brands slipped out of the top 10. They include Hewlett-Packard Co., which ranked seventh on last year's list, and General Electric Co., which was eighth in 2006.

See the full results of the poll here.

Methodology: This Harris Poll was conducted online among 2,372 adults between June 5 and June 11. Figures for age, sex, race and ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online. With a pure probability sample of 2,372, one could say with ninety-five percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of plus or minus two percentage points.

Link to Wall Street Journal Article

Coke, Ann Taylor, Others Partner with 'Hairspray'

New Line cinema has signed on the likes of Ann Taylor Loft and Coca-Cola to support "Hairspray," which is due out July 20

Big-name brands including Coca-Cola, Carnival Cruises, and Ann Taylor Loft are putting their marketing muscles behind New Line Cinema’s upcoming musical comedy “Hairspray.”

Carnival Cruises is featuring “Hairspray” activities on board, including a “Hair-aoke” contest, dance lessons and a tween club “Hairspray” sock hop on its 22 ships.

Travelers can don wigs and sing karaoke or take dance lessons to learn moves from the film. Prizes, including movie tickets and co-branded merchandise will be handed out.

It’s the first time Carnival has tied-in with a movie. The promotion is expected to reach millions of consumers in July, New Line Cinema said.

“The whole theme is embracing the joy of the movie,” said Lance Still, executive vice president of national promotions for the studio. “It’s a way for consumers to engage with the movie without being outright advertised to.”

In addition, customers who book a cruise online at Carnival.com/Hairspray through July 31 have a chance to win a trip for four to New York to see “Hairspray” on Broadway.

Toys R Us will host a private signing event on July 17 at its Times Square store in New York City to mark the launch of the “Hairspray” fashion doll line. During the event, fans can meet stars from the movie, including Nikki Blonsky, Amanda Byrnes and Brittany Snow.

New Line Cinema has event tapped a hair salon to support the film.

Sebastian Professional hair products is selling 1 million cans of limited edition “Ultra Clutch” Shaper Hairspray, the official hairspray of the movie. The company is handing out brochures tied to the flick, which offers hair styling tips. In-store signage, branded appointment cards, Web site content and print ads in W magazine, In Style, Allure and Entertainment Weekly support the promotion.

For its part, Cover Girl is running a special tie-in around its Queen Latifah cosmetic line. Print ads in In Style, Elle and other female-targeted magazines support the tie-in. This month, the company rolled out a movie-themed FSI with $1 off coupons for its eyewear products.

Coca-Cola is releasing 8 million co-branded cups for use at movie theaters, which will tie in to its MyCokeRewards loyalty program. The company has also created theater displays and on-screen ads promoting “Hairspray.”

Circuit City is offering a free DVD with behind-the-scenes footage with any entertainment software purchase. About 150,000 DVDs

Ann Taylor Loft rounds out the support featuring original costumes and props from the movie in its New York store windows at 42^nd Street and Broadway. The retailer is also running a sweepstakes offering the chance to win a private screening to the film.

The sweepstakes at AnnTaylorLoft.com/Hairspray runs through July 22. In-store signage and counter cards support the promotion.

Unlike other tie-ins, the Ann Taylor Loft promotion is subtle. “You have to discover It.,” Still said. “Retail-based promotions are really important because they resonate with the consumer in a way that traditional advertising doesn’t always.”

“Hairspray” follows the John Waters’ cult classic about starstruck teenagers on a local Baltimore dance show. The movie hits theaters on July 20.

Link to Promo Article

Wieden & Kennedy: The New Global Powerhouse

Shop Lost Nike Running, but It Nabbed Nokia and Is Growing in India, China

By Alice Z. Cuneo

Published: July 09, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- Wieden & Kennedy is back on track.

After being dealt an ego blow by losing Nike's running account, the shop in less than a month has scooped up an astounding $400 million in new billings. It added to its coffers Careerbuilder.com, Visa International's World Cup sponsorship, and the global creative and strategic duties for the Nokia brand.

The Nokia win adds to Wieden & Kennedy's roster, which already includes major global brands such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Honda in Europe.

"If anyone still doubts that Wieden is a global force as a network, wake up," said Neil Christie managing director of Wieden's London office.

As if to underscore the point, the agency is opening its sixth global office, in Delhi. Dave Luhr, global chief operating officer, said that "India is an incredibly important market in the world today. Clearly, clients want to take advantage of the opportunity."

He said the new office, like other Wieden offices and unlike the branch offices of major agencies, will be developed from scratch and will not involve the purchase of another shop. He expects to have between 20 and 30 employees there by the end of the year.

A wide net
Wieden already has two offices in China (Shanghai and Beijing), in addition to Tokyo, London, Amsterdam and New York. Because an agency based in Oregon has no illusion of growing with local clients, he said, it has to extend a wide net. "There's some advantage to being in Portland," Mr. Luhr said.

The Nokia win adds to Wieden's roster, which already includes major global brands such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Honda in Europe. Through 2006, Wieden reported global billings of $1.4 billion with 750 employees worldwide. The agency grew 40% in the past three years, Mr. Luhr said.

The Wieden-style "micro" ad network is what budget-conscious clients desiring great creative want, observers said. "This is what marketers are looking for today -- creativity -- and they don't want to pay the overhead of a gigantic network," said Russel Wohlwerth, principal, Ark Advisors, Los Angeles, an agency consulting firm. "Wieden's micro network is clearly for today's times."

Other consultants, however, aren't convinced Wieden has solved the integration and new-media issues that led to the loss of the running portion of the Nike business. "They're limiting their future by not being sufficiently integrated," said one consultant. "It's the Achilles' heel for them."

Link to AdAge Article