Influx Insights Tag Feed: cbs

entertainment brand buys its way into museums

Influx Insights — 2008-10-01T14:07:31Z

CBS's CSI series is certainly a popular franchise, but in a bid to continue to perpetuate the success for many years to come, CBS has created a museum exhibit for the show, that it appears to be taking around the world.

Obviously, from a brand experience perspective this is a fantastic extension and takes the brand into new places and gives it an enhanced sense of credibility that comes from its endorsement from museums.

Museums are obviously the latest places to be up for sale.

Year's back, Armani's show at the Guggenheim created a stir for all kinds of reasons. However, CSI's move is very different because it is trying to gain the endorsement from its museum partners. Obviously, this is a hire wire act for the museums to walk, they must strive to maintain their credibility, while seeking alternative sources of funding.

As capital dries up around the world, many new avenues will open up for companies to exploit, their challenge will be to do it right and for their new "media" partners to try hard not compromise their integrity.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the demise of network prime

Influx Insights — 2007-12-16T19:48:31Z

Via Infectious Greed

Posted by Ed Cotton

cbs launches a sensory invasion

Influx Insights — 2007-09-05T10:43:24Z

Although the television networks don't yet have the technology to bring "smell-o-rama" to our living rooms, they appear to be experimenting with it in their promo advertising campaigns.

CBS is using flavor strips to promote a new Fall show called Cane that follows the exploits of a rum-making dynasty. The print ad running in Rolling Stone uses a mohito flavored strip, sadly the strip is non-alchoholic, which sort of ruins the fun.

However, CBS seems happy with the advertising, regarding it as something of a breakthrough.

"What better way to launch a new series like this than design a one-of-a- kind print ad you can taste."

George Schweitzer,President of the CBS Marketing Group.

What better way, indeed.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the american idolization of news?

Influx Insights — 2007-06-08T08:13:23Z

Grant McCracken has a good post about Katie Couric,news and CBS. He suggests that there's a big oppoortunity to fuse news and entertainment or to bring the best of TV idolization to the news format.

"Perhaps it's time to move away from the "journalism" model and start again. The anthropological approach says "audition" candidates until a new model merges. Glenn Close? Sarah Silverman? Paula Abdul? Tim Gunn? The possibilities are endless."

brand voice 2.0- ambitious and humble

Influx Insights — 2007-06-02T21:00:18Z

Ambition and humbleness sound like opposites, but in this new world of brand 2.0, anything is possible.

Last FM just got taken over by CBS and they wrote about it on their blog last week.

Here's the last paragraph of the post that shows, or is designed to show (?), that despite being taken over by a multi billion media corporation, they are still human.

"There is quite a sense of achievement at Last.fm HQ today, we see this is as a huge boost for Last.fm and we are confident that together with CBS we have the wherewithall to change the music industry, and way people interact with music for good. Now we are all going for a slap up vietnamese lunch at the Viet Hoa. We’ll be back in an hour to finish off our facebook app :)"

Most of the comments from users to this post were positive.

from closed to open

Influx Insights — 2007-05-30T20:32:43Z

In the last week, there have been a couple of really interesting developments in the world of media.

- New media entity Facebook, run by a 23 year-old, opened up its API to third party developers.

- Old media giant, CBS purchased Wallstrip, Last FM and opened up its video content to broad internet distribution.

“In launching the CBS Audience Network we solidified our position as the most widely distributed professional content provider on the Web thanks to our great video distribution partners. We now want to empower our audience to be creative and deepen their experience with our content by allowing them to share and embed CBS-provided clips to their blogs, wikis, widgets, community sites and whatever else gets thrown our way. We are delighted to have so many quality partners — established and start ups — helping to bring CBS content to the online community.”

Quincy Smith-CBS Interactive

All these developments are significant, they recognize that the closed systems of old cannot compete in today's marketplace. To survive, you have to open things up and let your content out or let others come in and play.

Look around you, there are dozens of closed systems that are ripe for change, one is mobile communication. One interesting exception will be the iPhone, it's Wi-Fi enabled, users will not be obliged to use AT&T's network to make calls.

This is a trend Influx was been talked about for years and it applies to brands as they start to develop content and become more media like in their behavior. Create stuff, open up that creativity to others and distribute it freely. The idea that people have to come to your site to check out your content, is antiquated. Bud.TV might have been a success if it could have found a way to distribute its content around the internet (something it's now thinking about), instead of demanding that people come and visit.