Photo courtesy of David Silbey and his T-Mobile Dash

More interestingly, maybe cable operators should do something equivalent to ESPN’s Full Circle coverage of certain events like last year’s Duke vs. UNC games. Instead of having different ESPN networks covering different aspects of the game, have different on-demand channels showing different game-related content. One station could have the game at 3/4 screen with the rest of the display dedicated to dynamic player and game stats. Another station could syndicate one of the college’s own radio commentators over the broadcast video feed. Another station could feature different camera angles.

(more…)

If you watched the Super Bowl last night, chances are you tuned in for and even repeat-viewed some of the commercials. It’s the one time of year when couch potatoes actually want to watch ads, and TiVo capitalized on the phenomenon by making certain commercials download-able for enthusiastic fans.

Top Ten

1. Bud Light: Language Course with Carlos Mencia

2. Bud Light: Rock Paper Scissors

3. FedEx: Don’t Judge

4. Nationwide: Kevin Federline Rollin’ VIP

5. Doritos Crash the Super Bowl

6. CareerBuilder: Office Jungle

7. Blockbuster: Mouse

8. Doritos Crash The Super Bowl: Checkout Girl

9. Chevrolet: Everybody Loves a Chevy

10. Schick: Quarto Science

Given its new ad agency, maybe next year TiVo will have its own Super Bowl commercial?

TiVo’s giving away a Series2 dual-tuning TiVo with Lifetime Service each month through July. All that’s required for entry is an email address.

Interesting factoid #1: The package is valued at $549.98.

Interesting factoid #2: Contradicting speculation on the TCF, “Each DVR requires its own TiVo service subscription and activation, and it cannot generally be transferred to any other DVR.”

I assume this contest predates TiVo’s new advertising agency, The Kaplan Thaler Group. Wonder if they’d have told Mom (above) to show a bit more excitement?

Blockbuster video announced that they will be bringing back their lovable Carl and Ray campaign for this year’s Super Bowl spot. If you haven’t seen the clips, you can find them on YouTube or most of the other video sharing sites. I’ve never been a big fan of renting from Blockbuster, but I have to admit that I love these ads. The spots do a great job of infusing humor into the marketing message and the cuteness factor of digitally animated pets has an especially broad appeal for a spot that will be seen by such a large audience.

(more…)

Another quick note about Pandora as the next-generation MySpace… They’re taking a very social-networking approach to marketing. A musician friend of mine attended an event back in November hosted by Pandora at UPenn. The event was not directed at press, but instead consisted of founder Tim Westergren talking to students and gathering feedback and suggestions for the Pandora service. (According the Philly City Paper, the student audience members were complemented by “marketing-minded men in blazers and Web geeks.”)

While every company should be doing grass roots marketing, it’s interesting to see Pandora targeting the college crowd. These are the folks that fill the MySpace and Facebook realms. Given another alternative, will this fickle crowd migrate elsewhere? Or at least the music-minded ones among them?

(Thanks, Matt!)

TiVo’s been ramping up advertising recently (as they said they would), via partners and going it alone. Due to a few requests I went ahead and captured, trimmed, and published the latest television and radio ads. I’ve caught the radio ads on the local talk station (WTOP in DC) late afternoons, while the television ads seem to air on a few second tier stations (like E!, where I grabbed it) later in the evenings.

(more…)

I’ve never been bothered by the envelope ads that Netflix sends out with my DVDs each week, but when it comes to putting ads on their website I’ve never been a fan of the strategy. Netflix has such an amazing website that I’ve found their banner ads really take away from the overall experience of the site. For a long time Netflix resisted the temptation of adding ads to their homepage, but with the heavy demand that they’ve seen for their mailer ads, it was only a matter of time before we saw them to be tempted to monetize the massive amount of traffic that comes to their site each day.I may have been critical of Netflix when they made their foray into banner advertising, but one thing that I love about the company is that they always do plenty of testing with any change to their business model and it appears that banner ads have been no exception. While we haven’t heard any official word on the state of these advertisement experiments, Netflix Fan is reporting that an anonymous source has told her that the ads simply weren’t worth the trouble and that Netflix will begin phasing them out over the next few months. (more…)