Monday, November 10, 2003
How to market a blockbuster film (and props for Fox again!), KFC is healthy for you now, play the new Mob board game & the CIA "leakgate" story redux
Fried Chicken is now good for you? This is truly evidence that Atkins Diet-mania has gone awry ("KFC Ad Campaign Draws Fire From CSPI" Source: Center for Science in the Public Interest).
Note to Time Warner (formerly known as AOL-Time Warner): this is how to make corporate synergy really work at a modern media conglomerate. Today's New York Post newspaper includes a free promo DVD for the new Russell Crowe blockbuster movie Master and Commander, co-produced by sister company 20th Century Fox Films (in conjunction with Miramax).
I generally have little love for the right-leaning Fox Corp. but I have to applaud their clever use of non-traditional advertising and cross-marketing between divisions here. Obviously this huge a promotion for just one (albeit major) market shows either Fox's faith in how big a movie this will be or, at least, the level of their commitment behind it. It's tough to guage how much effect this "lifestyle" marketing effort will have on M&C's opening weekend box office (a topic, conincidentally, I happened to discuss with a friend today in relation to music marketing). But with exploding consumer-DVD sales growth one of few bright spots in the entertainment industry currently, I'm sure this will have some sort of impact least of which should be a nice one-day bump in the Post's circulation today.
Ghettopoly wasn't enough ethnic stereotyping in board games for you? Then try Godfathers and Goodfellas, "the Organized Crime Trivia Game." Click here for details and to order online or call 800-927-6644.
The results are in: "Elizabeth Smart Wins the TV Movie Duel" (Source: ABC News/AP).
And finally, in case you missed this news item on the CIA leak scandal:
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Note to Time Warner (formerly known as AOL-Time Warner): this is how to make corporate synergy really work at a modern media conglomerate. Today's New York Post newspaper includes a free promo DVD for the new Russell Crowe blockbuster movie Master and Commander, co-produced by sister company 20th Century Fox Films (in conjunction with Miramax).
I generally have little love for the right-leaning Fox Corp. but I have to applaud their clever use of non-traditional advertising and cross-marketing between divisions here. Obviously this huge a promotion for just one (albeit major) market shows either Fox's faith in how big a movie this will be or, at least, the level of their commitment behind it. It's tough to guage how much effect this "lifestyle" marketing effort will have on M&C's opening weekend box office (a topic, conincidentally, I happened to discuss with a friend today in relation to music marketing). But with exploding consumer-DVD sales growth one of few bright spots in the entertainment industry currently, I'm sure this will have some sort of impact least of which should be a nice one-day bump in the Post's circulation today.
Ghettopoly wasn't enough ethnic stereotyping in board games for you? Then try Godfathers and Goodfellas, "the Organized Crime Trivia Game." Click here for details and to order online or call 800-927-6644.
The results are in: "Elizabeth Smart Wins the TV Movie Duel" (Source: ABC News/AP).
And finally, in case you missed this news item on the CIA leak scandal:
FORMER CIA OFFICIAL TELLS PBS: OUTED OFFICER 'HAS BEEN UNDER COVER FOR THREE DECADES'
Outed CIA agent "Valerie Plame" was under cover for three decades and was not a "CIA analyst" as columnist Bob Novak has suggested.
"I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been under cover for three decades. She is not as Bob Novak suggested a "CIA analyst." Given that, i was a CIA analyst for 4 years. I was under cover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the CIA until I left the Intelligence Agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it. The fact that she was under cover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous. She was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she works with overseas could be compromised...
"For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal... and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that, well, this was just an analyst. Fine. Let them go undercover. Let's put them go overseas. Let's out them and see how they like it...
"I say this as a registered Republican. I am on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear, of an individual who had no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it because the entire intent was, correctly as Amb. Wilson noted, to intimidate, to suggest taht there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision-making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy, and frankly what was a false policy of suggesting that there was nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend it was something else, to get into this parsing of words.
"I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this." --Larry Johnson, former counter-terrorism official at the CIA & State Department from PBS's NEWSHOUR. (Source: The Drudge Report)
