Brand Noise

Red Bull's DNA of Sport

(from Adweek) MEN7, a multiplatform lifestyle and entertainment network that debuts July 3, has partnered with Red Bull to create a branded entertainment Web series, DNA of Sport. The series take a soft-sell approach, and the integrations don't showcase specific Red Bull products or overtly push the brand. Instead, interactive contextual overlays give viewers the chance to explore the world of actions sports and -- hopefully -- forge deeper bonds with Red Bull, said Darren Chuckry, COO at MEN7.  read more

Brunette Solidarity

According to W Magazine, Diane Von Furstenberg has been carrying a picture of Wonder Woman around in her diary for years. Who knew? It came up in an article about the capsule Wonder Woman collection she developed in tandem with Warner Bros. and DC Comics. Joel Silver's movie is still in the works for 2009, while everyone laments the team's loss of Buffy Vampire Slayer's Joss Whedon over creative visions.

Rural Blues Band Befriends R. Crumb & Daughter

John Heneghan and Eden Brower of NY’s East River String Band are reviving rural blues. “Before radio took over in the mid-1930s, music was really interesting — people weren’t hearing each other. Now, you can hear the most popular thing on the radio and then everybody copies it. In the ’20s, music was different from state to state, county to county.” Robert Crumb, the iconic cartoonist and 78 record collector has befriended the band, along with his daughter, who is also an artist. Crumb has traded records in their apartment, sat in on their shows and, most recently, drew the cover art for “Some Cold Rainy Day.” Definitely something to be said for the days before mass influence. Has the envelope for innovation been pushed beyond its limits? Read more.

Mapping cultural impact plays out for Clorox Greenworks

Be careful when you make new friends in the new era of networks.  Partnerships, especially dealing with politically charged areas such as green, are often more complicated than you think. When Clorox courts a deal with the Sierra Club for the Greenworks line of cleaners, the marriage can cause a ripple effect that shifts the narrative for groups  clustered around and connected up to that point in the "green" social network. 

(excerpt from this week's AdAge) Green marketers want endorsements from environmental groups to give their efforts greater credibility. Environmental groups know those marketers can provide some much-needed money and exposure. It's a marriage made in heaven -- except when it's not. Four of the Sierra Club's 64 chapters outright opposed the association. And it's not hard to find a blog by outraged former Sierra Club members decrying the partnership.

The lesson is that the new friend you make on the new consumer playground for your brand is not necessarily going to get everyone liking you.  In fact, at first the stories will generate on you with more focus and skepticism than before.  The key is staying on top of how this language evolves.  Understanding ways to demonstrate that the brand is evolving and moving forward.  Speaking as a brand that is learning from the partnership. The partnerships should never come off as a "quick pass" to green. They are an opportunity for a dialog to  grow and improve a product line.  Anticipating  ripples in the networks that brands seek to engage and participate in is crucial to their growth and survival. Mapping the cultural impact is just as important as mapping the sales impact. Brands need to do both now.

NYC Gets Drive-ins This Summer

“Drive-ins have been disappearing for decades, declining to about 400 today from a peak of more than 4,000 in 1958, largely because of rising property prices and changing movie-going habits. After today, there will be 30 or so scattered across New York State, two in Connecticut, and just one, the Delsea in Vineland, in all of New Jersey, the state where drive-ins were born in 1933.” —The New York Times
                   
                    DRV-IN, a pop-up drive-in at 139 Norfolk that ends this week, will partner this summer with area parking lots, car rental companies, and car manufacturers to produce a spectacular series that will bring back the drive-in: Cars Under the Stars.                    

                   

iTunes/BBC..."Computer says no"

I love news of internet media partnerships that seem like they are going to be great and yet...NOT.  The news of the BBC/iTunes deal seemed great until I learned that it is only in the UK.  The BBC says it is Britain's first broadcaster to offer television programmes on iTunes for download onto Apple's video iPods and iPhones. I need Little Britain and Alan Partridge  on the go more than tired repeats of CSI Miami.  Work it out people - I'm waiting.

Kid Robot, Secret to “Yo Gabba Gabba!” Success?

“Yo Gabba Gabba!” began appearing on Nickelodeon in August, and with remarkable speed it has acquired fans who are preschoolers and fans who are old enough to be their parents...Charles Rivkin, the president and chief executive of Wildbrain, which produces the show, says, “I challenge you to find another preschool show that four months after going on the air is actually selling adult apparel at Barneys.”

While plenty of shows for children have also appealed to adults — “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” “H. R. Pufnstuf,” even “Sesame Street” — “Yo Gabba Gabba!” updates this idea for a generation that, it has been argued, is ambivalent about letting go of its own youth.

The real deal came when the original creators hooked up with Wildbrain. Back in 2006, Wildbrain acquired a majority interest in Kidrobot, which makes and sells high-end “designer toys” and apparel that appeal to fashionable young adults (who may or may not be parents). Thus “Gabba”-related products arrived in exclusive retail settings much faster than usual, demonstrating consumer demand to other merchandise partners.

You couldn’t ask for more perfect serendipity in partners, which goes to prove that authenticity starts at the drawing board. Had “Yo Gabba Gabba!” been conceived under other premises, it wouldn’t have been strong enough to bring into the Kid Robot world. On the other hand, if “Yo Gabba Gabba!” merchandise went straight to big box retailers you would’ve had a watered down product. The Kid Robot connection offers the brand longevity, with more staying power than it would have had on its own.

(Image: T-shirt recrafted into dress by JinJur.)
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Expanding on Social Software Behavior

Google.org's technology project to help save lives in the event of natural disasters or public health threats is set to launch Thursday.

The project, called Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEDD), is a nonprofit organization that ambitiously aims to help communities around the world use Web and communications technology to identify and warn others of outbreaks like Avian flu or disasters like Hurricane Katrina. That technology, which will include social software Twitter and Facebook, will be used to coordinate rescue responses and help save lives.

"We're not talking about pulling the red phone out of the bottom drawer here," said Eric Rasmussen, president and CEO of InSTEDD and a former adviser to U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense, referring to Twitter and Facebook. "We're talking about using ubiquitous, free software that is repurposed when necessary to fit into a humanitarian need."

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Conde Nast Gets in Step with Facebook

Why fight what’s already working? It’s more important to be the one who is empowering consumers. Conde Nast is beginning to catch on:

Flip.com launched in February as CondeNet's effort to target teen girls with an ambitious social media site. Less than a year later, the digital arm of Conde Nast is reversing course to embrace a distributed media strategy and converting the destination site into a series of applications that will live on social networks, starting with Facebook.

"It's hard to carve out enough time from those girls [because of] Facebook," said Sarah Chubb, president of CondeNet. "Why fight it and try to build your own social network when there is one that is open to things being built on top of it?"

By abandoning a destination strategy, CondeNet hopes to draw an expanded audience from the peak of 300,000 users the site attracted.

Flip already has a series of applications on Facebook that have proven moderately popular.

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GM Denies Hummer HX Inspired by Halo

A lot of Halo fans think Hummer's new HX concept SUV looks quite a bit like the Warthog all-terrain vehicle from Bungie's hit games. The designers must have been thinking of the Warthog when they built it, right?

Wrong. Carl Zipfel, GM's director of exterior design for the HX concept, says the Warthog was not an inspiration for the new compact SUV.

Zipfel emphasized the futuristic look and off-road capabilities of the HX at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit today. But he says the design comes from modern-day ATVs, not Halo's heavily armed military vehicles.

Zipfel says he saw the buzz about the HX in video game blogs, and he seemed flattered by the the comparison. He even said he and several of the vehicle's young designers play Halo.

But as for the Warthog resemblance — that's just a coincidence.

GM's dismissing this too quickly. I see shades of the Coke/Mentos denial. GM, time to introduce yourself to the gang at Bungie and maybe connect with the Rooster Toothers.

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