Madison & Vine Revisited

A couple of years ago Scott Donaton, the editor of Advertising Age, published a book called Madison & Vine: Why the Entertainment and Marketing Industries Must Converge to Survive. Scott revisited ‘branded entertainment’ in a talk he gave recently, which has been published at the Madison & Vine section of Advertising Age. In the article he quickly explains what Madison & Vine is:

At its simplest, there were two primary factors that drove the entertainment and marketing businesses reluctantly into each other’s arms. For marketers, as I mentioned earlier, there was fear. New devices such as digital video recorders were giving audiences the ability to bypass traditional forms of media advertising. These devices let consumers decide when, how and whether they were going to interact with all forms of content. So some in the ad community decided that if they were going to avoid commercials, one valid reaction to that would be to embed products, logos and commercial messages into those entertainment vehicles viewers were choosing to spend time with.

Across the continent from Madison Avenue, those in Hollywood found their own business models and bottom lines under enormous pressure, partly from the same factors. There were other pressures felt all over Hollywood. For film studios, the costs of producing and marketing films became a huge burden just as some traditional sources of funding dried up. And the movie-business, too, was threatened by the same technologies disrupting the TV and music industries.

The result was that these two sides, the ad business and the entertainment business, which decades ago established outposts on separate coasts of the U.S. and mostly operated independently of each other since then were suddenly compelled towards each other. They realized that they had the potential to help each other out. If nothing else, the advertisers had the money and the entertainment companies had the creativity and the attention of audiences.

And covers some notable examples:

Check it out: http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article.php?article_id=121042

The Creators of Outstanding Online Experiences…

UK-based Hi-ReS! (Handsome information – Radical entertainment Systems), founded in 1999 by Alexandra Jugovic and Florian Schmitt, have been creating amazing award-winning websites for the film, TV, music and marketing industries for a few years now. Some of their sites, like Requiem for a Dream and Donnie Darko, I mention in my article about ‘Filmmakers That Think Outside the Film‘ over at Lance Weiler’s WorkBookProject. Here is a listing of some of the sites they’ve worked on:

Any day now a book (with DVD), Hi-res!: Amantes sunt Amentes, detailing their projects will be published. You can preorder at: Amazon UK and Amazon US. Great stuff!

Theatre ARG?: 1001

1001

That got your attention. Playwright and screenwriter Jason Grote’s new play, 1001, is set to premiere in New York on October 22nd. Jason has done what not many playwrights have done (that I know of — tell me if not!) and created a fictional newspaper for the play, with links to a diegetic blog and a wiki. Although it isn’t an ARG, it certainly plays with the idea of creating a fictional universe as a precurser to the live experience.

Check it out: http://1001nyc.com/