The River

The former Rocketboom star rises again, partnering with Pop Urls to host a daily videocast called PopHub focusing on, yes, popular URLs. (Full disclosure: Pop Urls is an FM site.)

Should be interesting to see if Amanda can command an audience in this venture. And it’s also noteable that, despite Hollywood ambitions, she’s not going all mainstream media. Is this by choice? Or by default?

UPDATE: Thomas of Pop Urls writes in and says (of an earlier version): “it’s not completely correct - her editorial selection of links on popurls is not ultimately connected with her video project and pophub.com is in fact the blog for popurls.com ;).” Ok, corrected.

It’s hard to think of a product more well-suited for online marketing than Plan B, the Barr Pharmaceutical drug approved for sale to over-18s this week. A WSJ piece (reg req) today lays it all out pretty well. They need to reach a wide audience because contraception failure is the kind of thing that happens to a lot of people once or twice. It’s not the kind of situation where you try to reach your endemic audience, say HIV+ people or diabetes sufferers, and then target tightly based on that goal.

It’s also the kind of product for which advertising is more appropriate online. People are accustomed to doing all kinds of personal things online — paying bills, indulging their sexual proclivities, etc. — so seeing ads for Plan B aren’t likely to jar. This stands in stark contrast to how people might feel if they see such an ad while watching TV with family members. (May I suggest that FM’s Parenting Federation might be appropriate?)

The company’s Web site, go2planb.com is already getting great search rankings. It’s top of the heap and page 2 on Google, and it also benefits from shortcuts and refinements because the search engine recognizes it as a drug. I would have expected this kind of generic phrase to be difficult to optimize, but I would be wrong.

Note to Barr: It might be a good idea to update your Web site to reflect the FDA approval, and give potential customers an idea when they might expect to be able to buy over the counter. Right now, the site still says you need a prescription. The FDA approval, and corresponding media exposure, is likely to drive lots of traffic. (Note Google Trends report on the term. It’s really popular in Bogota, Colombia, interestingly.)

It’s fascinating to see what Big Tobacco does to market itself nowadays (to adult smokers only, natch), given all the restrictions these companies face. And now they’re joining the user-generated-media craze. The image here was from an e-mail I received after signing up for a mailing list (and verifying my age, and saying I smoke). If you’re under 18 or a non-smoker, navigate away now, before you accidentally become swayed by the marketing message.

Heading back to my car after grabbing my cup of coffee this morning, something on the sidewalk caught my eye. A child had drawn a picture of a scene featuring an animal of a sort. The caption? “Neopets.”

Talk about media affinity and brand love. Writ large. In chalk.

Further reading: Neopets profile, Viacom acquisition for $160M last summer.

The WSJ has a great interview (sub req) with Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s executive creative director Kevin Roddy, talking about the company’s creation of the “Tea Partay” video for client Smirnoff. Nice work, folks. Amusing creative, if somewhat derivative of other YouTube hits like “Lazy Sunday” and its spin-offs. Great subtle integration of the product throughout, and excellent addition of the URL to the end of the piece.

But then, if you actually go to teapartay.com, what happens? Not a lot. The URL re-directs to the main Smirnoff site, where you have to put in your birth date. That’s fine. But even if you navigate in via teapartay.com, there’s only a small banner at the bottom of the page promising that the opportunity to “Join the Tea Partay” is “coming soon.” Subtle integration of the product into the original video is great, but once someone expresses real interest in the brew, go ahead and put it front and center. Don’t subtly tease it and urge people to come back later. What are the chances of that happening?

This may just be a sign of the continuing disconnect between the traditional agency creating the video (even if it’s distributed on the Web, it’s still pretty darned traditional) and whoever is handling the Web site. It’s also a reminder of the importance of bridging that gap. If you don’t, your results will fall way short of what they could be.

Great post from our ad sales honcho Chas Edwards in response to a New Yorker piece on bloggers, pamphleteers and reporters. My mentors, Jason Chervokas and Tom Watson, have made this case many a time, and now the new dean of my J-school makes it, too.

So, researchers at University College, London, have come up with geographical classifications of the various levels of e- (as in electronic) awareness, and are allowing people to put in their postcodes to see how their area ranks.

I entered in my husband’s old postcode in Scotland and, och, the results were depressing:

The ‘E – unengaged’ are typically groups that do not have access to electronic communications or technologies. Most are too old, too poor or too poorly educated to be able to access them, and instead traditionally rely upon personal contacts they trust for advice. Within this Group there are low levels of literacy and many people do not feel that their life outcomes are much subject to their own decisions. Within this group there is a very low level of ownership of personal computers, very little access to them at work and little ambition to master the skills necessary to take advantage of information technologies. Unsurprisingly, these people have a very low level of using email at any location (home, work and other locations) or participating in other on-line activities.

Members of this Group tend to live in the poorer areas of traditional mining and manufacturing towns and to have conservative social attitudes. A high proportion of the Group is made up of elderly people, many of whom live in social housing or sheltered accommodation.

Type A04 : Mobile’s the limit

This Type has particularly low levels of use of computers and the Internet, knows next to nothing about the technology and has no motivation to do so. They enjoy more traditional modes of communication, but the mobile phone represents the limit of their technical ambition. Many of this Type are female and elderly.

No digital savvy, and no motivation to learn. It probably says more about me that I’m horrified at this. They may be perfectly satisfied with their lot in life.

Here’s the BBCi write-up.

[via PaidContent.org]

WSJ (and maybe others) are reporting (sub req) on Google’s “breakthrough” relationship with MTV. Yeah, it’s interesting, especially because Google, and its existing distribution network, is involved, but is it so original? Not really. Brightcove is doing something similar (with partners like NYTimes Co., Sony and TiVo) and the phenomenon has been around long enough for ClickZ to write a feature about it. (If you’re trying to get a handle on this space, I encourage you to check out that feature.)

So some of it is the usual “gaga for Google” hype, but there’s obviously something real going on in the ad/video syndication space, and the big G becoming a player is significant. I look forward to seeing what comes of it all.