The Sunday Times (UK) reported at the weekend (Registration Required — this is Rupert Murdoch’s new PAID newspaper site) that the sheer number of new internet-connected devices, such as smartphones and tablets, has sparked a desperate need for more infrastructure to support all this flood of data. The proliferation of high-definition video and the launch of the iPad mean that the volume of data traffic will go on soaring.

It might not feel like it, but the boom is still in its infancy. “Less than 1% of all video is watched online,” said Tom Leighton, co-founder of Akamai, whose technology helps clients such as Microsoft and Amazon dodge the traffic jams on the data highways. “In the coming years you are looking at a factor of 1,000 increase and a system that is already under stress.”

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You’d be forgiven for thinking that today’s holy marketing grail is to be talked about (a lot) in social media. Unfortunately, social buzz doesn’t necessarily translate into either attention or sales.

That discontinuity has now been clearly illustrated thanks to a just-released U.S. report from Networked Insights Inc called “SocialSenseTV”, which correlates the buzz on popular US television shows with their actual Nielsen ratings.

The report covers the period from the 1st of February 2010 to the 25th of April 2010. Unsurprisingly given that timeframe, the Number 1 most-discussed show across the social networks was “Lost”, counting down to last week’s final episode. However, despite its Number 1 social status, the ever-mysterious saga could only average 10th place in the Nielsen TV ratings (amongst those 18-64) across the period.

American Idol, second most talked-about TV series, was actually the top-rating TV show in the US for that time period according to Nielsen; Glee, third most buzzed, sang and danced its way into fourth in the ratings.

Further down the list, however, the disparity between the two metrics becomes far more evident. The Simpsons, still buzzworthy after all these years, ranks Number 4 on the social-o-meter but rates 44th most-watched series according to Nielsen; the Number 5 social show, Heroes, only manages an asterisk in the report (which means in this instance that the show is ranked lower Nielsen’s 50 most-watched shows).

Other socially-superior shows that fell into the Nielsen realm of the asterisk included Saturday Night Live (9th most social), Cold Case (11th), So You Think You Can Dance (16th), Chuck (17th) and How I Met Your Mother (20th).

What implications can we take from all this?

Firstly, that just because a topic hits water-cooler status doesn’t mean that talk will translate into action. In fact, it may well be that in many cases social newsgatherers can get enough out of the virtual buzz to avoid bothering to engage with the product at all. The next best thing to being there may well be listening hard enough to be able to bluff your way through in future conversations.

Secondly, those who stalk the corridors of the social networks, numerous though they may be, are not yet representative of the population at large — they’re younger (and tend to spend less time engaging with traditional media and more time interacting with each other). And when it comes to disposable income their share of purse still tends to be lower, except for core categories of importance to their demographic.

Thirdly, buzz about any particular event or TV show AFTER the event is just too darned late. Yes, TV operators might gather a few viewers to their Replay TV service, but for most other applications, it’s already over. The time to drive buzz is beforehand.

And finally, especially when it comes to TV shows that have been around a while, many of us carry a symbolic understanding of at least the most popular shows in our heads. Episodic television being what it is, where things don’t change much from week to week, all we need is a few fragments of current information to update our cerebral files and we don’t need to see the show to have the experience.

In summary:  it’s nice when they’re talking about you (especially beforehand) but it’s no substitute for the ka-ching of the cash register.

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Sponsorship Under Threat

12 Billion US Dollars — that’s the estimated loss in value that Tiger Woods’ little dalliance with a tree trunk cost his sponsors, according to a study by two US professors from the University of California.

“Our analysis makes clear that while having a celebrity of Tiger Woods’ stature as an endorser has undeniable upside, the downside risk is substantial, too,” said Victor Stango, professor of economics.

Stango and fellow economics professor Christopher Knittel studied the stock market for 13 days after Woods crashed his car outside his Florida home on November 27 last year.

That event, and the subsequent firestorm of publicity surrounding the Tiger’s other activities, cost sponsors plenty — and raised serious questions about the risks as well as the rewards associated with sponsorship for today’s marketers.

Sponsors everywhere are reviewing their commitments. It’s a sign of the times. According to global sponsorship giant IEG, 2009 saw an historic milestone the sponsorship industry would rather not have achieved. For the first time, less money was spent on sponsorship by North American companies than in the prior year. US sponsorship spending shrank 0.6 percent in ’09 to $16.51 billion, representing a loss of $100 million that previously had gone to properties.

The writing’s been on the wall for some time. In January and February 2009, fifty-one percent of respondents to the annual IEG/Performance Research Sponsorship Decision-makers Survey said their companies’ spending on sponsorship fees would decrease in 2009. And slightly less than half of sponsors–47 percent–said they were seeking to get out of some of their current sponsorships even though those deals were not currently up for renewal.

Sponsors are looking for more bangs for their buck — and who can blame them?

A quick quiz. Think of your own favorite event — the one you try to watch or participate in most often. How many sponsors of that event can you name?

Now, for each sponsor you can remember, ask yourself these questions:

1. Apart from the fact that they sponsor this event, what else do you know about them? Has the fact that they sponsored your favourite event affected your view of them? Made you think of them more often? Kept their name and brand in your mind? Have you become “a raving fan” of their product(s)?
2. If you’ve purchased a product or service in their product category in the last twelve months, did you choose their brand? If so, was it (at least in part) because of their sponsorship? If not, why not?
3. Do they use the sponsorship as a means of interacting with you and/or keeping in touch?

In those three areas of questioning, we’ve pretty much encapsulated the core benefits that sponsors should be seeking from sponsorships:

• Brand & Product Awareness
• Direct Sales (or sales influence); or
• Customer Relationship building.

What Do Sponsors Want?
Research in early 2008 (the Eighth Annual IEG/Performance Research Sponsorship Decision-Makers Survey), drawing from 165 sponsorship decision-makers around the world provides some interesting insights into sponsorship.

These are the key findings:

Which category do you expect your company to be more involved with this year (2008)?

* 41% of the respondents cited Sports
* 27% Causes
* 27% Community Events
* 23% Online sponsorship
* 16% Entertainment
* 12% The Arts

And less?

* 26% Entertainment
* 20% Online sponsorship
* 21% The Arts
* 15% Community Events
* 12% Sports
* 10% Causes

How do you typically go about selecting a property to sponsor?

* 75% set strategy and then sought the right property
* 73% were approached directly by property owners.
* 28% received details about a sponsorship property from a sales agency
* 13% consult a sponsorship specialist to determine strategy

What percentage of your marketing budget is spent on sponsorship?

* 43% – 1-10% of the budget
* 26% – 11-20%
* 15% – 21-30%
* 7% – 31-40%
* 7% – 41-50%
* 3% – 51-75% of the budget

On top of the rights fees paid for your sponsorship, what is the ratio as to how much more your company typically spends on leveraging and activation?

* 17% – less than 1 to 1

* 48% – 1 to 1

* 14% – 2 to 1

* 12% – 3 to 1
* 9% – 4 to 1 or more

During the past 12 months, which of the following marketing communication channels have you used to leverage your sponsorship programs?

* 80% Traditional Advertising
* 77% Public Relations
* 71% Internal Communications
* 69% Hospitality
* 63% Internal Tie-Ins
* 62% Direct Marketing
* 60% Sampling On-Site
* 50% Business to Business
* 47% Sales Promotion Offers

In past years, less than 5% of effort was spent on Contests, Discounts, Displays, EMarketing, Experiential Activation or Promotional Giveaways

What do you consider the most valuable benefits to your organisation?

* 64% Category Exclusivity
* 54% On-Site Signage
* 45% Broadcast Ad opportunity
* 43% ID in property collateral materials
* 41% Title of Proprietary Area
* 39% Sponsor ID in Property’s Media Buy
* 38% presence on property website
* 36% Access to Property’s Database
* 31% right to use propertyy marks/logos
* 23% Access to Property-provided research

Which of the following do you typically analyze when making your sponsorship decision?

* 92% Demographics
* 82% Attendance
* 73% Fan passion/affinity
* 50% What your competition sponsors
* 49% Psychographics
* 49% Growth trends in property category
* 42% Interest in the property amongst trade/dealers
* 36% TV Ratings

The above data gives some useful insights if you’re planning to get involved in sponsorship. But (especially if you’re being constantly approached for sponsorship dollars) you may need more. We’ve created a tool to help you reach some useful and meaningful conclusions about prospective sponsorship proposals. We’ve even given it a snappy name:

Sponsorship Evaluation Checklist

This Checklist will lead you through the process of evaluating potential sponsorships, whether for sports, arts, cause-related, online or community-interest properties.

Here’s a sampling of the issues you need to consider as part of any sponsorship assessment:

* Alignment of brand values
* Audience reach
* Sponsorship levels
* Consumer profiling?
* Trends
* Competitors
* Trade interest
* Sponsorship elements to consider
* Affordability
* Leveraging opportunities
* Visibility
* Hospitality
* Media coverage
* Rights on offer
* Credentials
* Post-Event Evaluation

The Checklist provides a step by step rundown of the items you need to consider if you’re serious about sponsorship. It’s not fancy, but it’s comprehensive.

If it’s relevant to you, the Sponsorship Evaluation Checklist (provided as a download in PDF format) is available for $47+tax. Click on this link for credit card ordering via PayPal and instant fulfilment via eJunkie.

PS Would the Checklist have helped Tiger’s sponsors? Well one of our very first questions on the Checklist asks “Would being associated with this sponsorship send the right messages and encourage consumers to become more rabidly enthusiastic about your brand?” Clearly Accenture, AT&T and now Gatorade have asked the same question, which has led to rather public unsponsoring. But it looks like nobody (with the possible exception of Tiger’s mobile phone company) could have seen this one coming.

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Those fine folks at Springwise (an excellent resource for stealing ideas — get yourself on their newsletter mailing list) have pointed us in the direction of  “a nationwide network of pop-up marketing places”:

BrandNew Stores aims to turn fleeting pop-up shops into a chain concept, creating fixed spaces where brands can temporarily present themselves in a regular retail environment. Its first branch opened in the Dutch town of Amstelveen last month, where Alfa Romeo used the shopping mall space to present its new Alfa Mito model. It’s all about experience marketing: companies can use a BrandNew Store for a few weeks to present a product or service, or to reach out to new and existing customers without going for immediate sales.

Targeting premium retail areas where unhurried leisure-shoppers are more likely to explore a client’s offerings, BrandNew Stores will add locations in Groningen, Den Haag and Rotterdam later this year, with more cities to follow in 2010. The stores will be decked out with video screens, interactive floor projectors and other elements that make it easy for brands to present themselves.

Exclusivity has been a major element of the pop-up phenomenon, and brands have mostly limited their temporary attention-seeking abodes to major cities like London and New York. By creating a nationwide network, much of that exclusivity is lost, and the concept becomes more of a regular marketing tool. Which has its benefits: brands can reach a much wider audience, and being able to design once and then move everything to another city significantly brings down the cost per location. Since rents are still down in most malls and high street shopping areas, now’s the time to bring this to other countries.

What can you do with a Pop-Up store?

Lots of things:

How about a purpose-built Nike Tennis pop-up-shop, just 1km from Wimbledon? The store was a hub of tennis activity, featuring vibrant art installations, grass-covered signage and historic memorabilia from Nike’s past Wimbledon champions. As a pop-up shop it only existed for the 2-week duration of the tournament, after which the store returned to its original look and function as a DVD rental store.

How about a water store?

Jewelry:

Sikara & Co. Jewelry Pop-Up Store makes Union Street in San Francisco its new home as a “pop-up” shop.

“This style of store front allows us to open a temporary store in San Francisco and market test our collections as we roll them out nationally; we are very excited to be one of the first pop-up stores in the city,” said Mousumi Shaw, Founder and Creative Director.

The temporary store features globally inspired designs that fall into four collections: Indian, Italian, Mexican and Egyptian.  Limited edition pieces will also be available for the holiday, many of which are exclusive to the Union Street pop-up.  Sikara & Co. has partnered with San Francisco Stylist, Jill Siefert, as she will be helping customers most Mondays in the store with free styling tips.

As the LA Times reports, popup stores are a blessing to landlords in the current economy:

Designed to generate buzz and lure shoppers with a get-in-while-you-can appeal, pop-ups allow merchants to move quickly, opening up shops to test a new product or market, and closing them without much fuss.

Gap Inc. recently opened a pop-up shop on trendy Robertson Boulevard to promote its new premium denim line; celebrities including Halle Berry and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz turned out to the shop’s launch party. Toys R Us Inc. is setting up about 80 temporary toy shops nationwide, including several at upscale malls previously unavailable to the chain. J.C. Penney Co. touted its back-to-school offerings through interactive pop-up displays in half a dozen Southern California malls.

The pop-up phenomenon is not that new. BusinessWeek wrote about it in early 2007, giving a solid business perspective on the experiential marketing possibilities — and providing us with more inspiration along the way:

Four days. That’s how much time New Yorkers had to get a piece of the upscale design line Proenza Schouler at discount prices. On Feb. 2, the über-chic discount retail store Target popped open a store in lower Manhattan, to display this latest high-fashion-at-low-prices design line. The store then closed on Feb. 5.

In a world of BlackBerries and instant messaging, there’s a growing sense of haste in people’s lives. In response, companies trying to get consumers’ attention are trying to create a sense of urgency. For retailers, who need to get people into stores to try out their clothes, their shoes, and any other new products, the store itself is the new limited edition. So limited in fact that it may last a mere 96 hours. “There’s a certain passion about things that shout ‘act now!’ and that has transpired into the way we shop too,” says Claudine Gumbel, co-founder of Think PR, a New York fashion publicity firm.

These days, retailers are adopting the concept of a pop-up store with gusto. A pop-up store opens up at an empty retail location for a few days in a major city, or a mall, with great fanfare. And then, poof! It’s gone. In November [2006], Nike  opened a pop-up store in Soho for just four days for the sole purpose of selling 250 pairs of the Zoom LeBron IV NYC basketball shoes, named after the popular 22-year-old NBA All-Star LeBron James. The special edition shoes were priced at $250 each.

In May and June, Gap kicked off a ’60s style tour, where it used a school bus as a traveling pop-up store that made appearances in Los Angeles and New York and stopped at beaches on both coasts. Instead of seats, the bus sported shelves filled with t-shirts, flip-flops, and beach hats that people bought and paid for at a cash register near the driver’s seat. Even the stodgy giant Wal-Mart adopted the concept last April, when it showed its new fashion line Metro 7 in a Fashion Cabana in Miami’s South Beach district, open for only two days.

BUDGET BUZZ
Retailers use pop-up stores to generate buzz and excitement around a new product launch, as in the case of Target’s Proenza Schouler line. Sometimes, the stores are a great way for stores to check the pulse of consumers and try out new products. Usually, they are less costly than television ads, which can run in the millions of dollars to produce and broadcast, and the stores generate similar buzz and publicity for new brands.

Even nonretailers are giving it a try. The U.S. Potato Board, which represents American potato growers, opened a pop-up store in New York, during the week of Thanksgiving, for less than $200,000. The group, with the help of cartoon character Mr. Potato Head, promoted the message that potatoes contain more potassium than bananas as well as nutrients like folic acid and vitamin C.

Pop-up stores have worked especially well, though, for brands that don’t have a retail outlet store. Currently, the carmaker Lexus is wrapping up its multicity pop-up art gallery tour in Chicago. There, it has rented retail space to showcase three avant-garde artists—a photographer, a video movie maker, and a wood carver—whom the company feels reflect the innovation and design elements of its latest self-parking car.

For much of last year, Ford opened kiosks in several malls around the country to show off its midsize Fusion. The kiosks, labeled Fusion Studio D, were targeted at women, and offered makeovers, fitness training, and health information. The kiosks would pop up in malls in cities around the country, just days before the local Susan G. Komen Foundation’s Race for the Cure, and signed up people who wanted to run to cure breast cancer.

LOOKING FOR KICKS
Of course, it’s not easy to set up a pop-up store [which is why the notion of a store network is so appealing]. Unoccupied stores in hot retail locations aren’t easy to come by [2009 update: more available now]. Moreover, they can backfire, if a retailer doesn’t staff the store with some of the best customer service personnel, who know enough about the brand. “We had to make sure there were people who live and breathe Florida to explain what they were missing,” says Nicki Grossman, chief executive of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau, which set up a pop-up store—complete with sandy beaches, a golf putting hole, lifeguards, and beach beauties—in January in New York.

No wonder companies feel the pressure not only to be cool, but to offer visitors an additional kick. For instance, when electronics company JVC opened its pop-up store, it offered karaoke and let people film themselves using its newly launched video camera and make their own DVDs, which folks could then carry home as gifts. And sneaker maker Fila let people draw their own designs on a computer, which they printed on a T-shirt that shoppers could take home with them for free. “You had the sense that you are creating artwork and you are really engaging the consumer, which is the most important part,” says Gumbel of Think PR.

Retailers have clearly discovered that pop-up stores bring brands to life and let people sample products in a great format, without much cost. “Try getting that from a 30-second ad,” says Claudia Strauss, president of Lime PR, in New York.

Uniqlo, the hip Japanese retailer of casual wear, took the pop-up format to a new level late in the runup to the November 2006 opening of its New York store. To announce its arrival, it drove two shipping containers into the city and used them as stores that “popped up” in various locations over eight weeks to show off the company’s apparel:

Pop-up stores — coming to an empty location near you. Are you up for it?

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Global ad agency giant Universal McCann recently described online video as this year’s digital darling.

That’s all very well, but that doesn’t make online video easy.

Jerry Bader of MRPwebmedia hit the nail on the head a few months back when he posed the question on LinkedIn:

“Web video is quickly becoming the must-have content presentation vehicle. Considering its increasing importance to online content delivery, what has stopped you: cost, concept, implementation, the right producer, or just don’t see the value?”

Here’s what we said at the time (and it’s as relevant as ever today):

Web video has definitely increased in importance as a content delivery mechanism (we leave it to others to debate its merits as a “must-have”). However if we are to consider using video as a professional option (rather than in the ‘boy bites dog’ fashion of YouTube), then there are a number of issues to address.

The first is content.

It’s one thing to write an essay or a document that reads well, a far more ambitious undertaking to provide the same information in video form. We are all conditioned to expect professional production values in videos thanks to decades of network television — to communicate via video we need to be similarly professional.

That means, in effect, providing compelling content in both audio and video format.

That, in turn, means a need for creativity in performance art, not just words. And skilled hands in the production of the video. And on-screen talent, lest we be judged amateurs based on our acting capabilities or lack thereof.

So, for example, an answer such as this represents thought and a relatively few minutes work on the keyboard. To provide an answer by way of a video would require:

• a scenario (Scene 1: Blogger thrust on camera, proves poor speaker. Cut to angry crowds. Scene 2: Blogger given media training. Scene 3: set built. Scene 4: Blogger to camera, in extreme closeup. Makeup artist rushes over to damp down sweating, cover up zits …. etc etc)

• a script
• a setting
• production facilities
• on-screen talent
• editing expertise
• blah blah

At this point, the payoff isn’t sufficient to warrant the resources and upskilling required.

We have to move beyond the mundane everyday communications, saving video for the big events. Or else agree not to judge a book by its video ….

Has YouTube lowered the bar?

No. Not for professional communications. If we see a baby biting his brother’s finger on YouTube (129 million views and counting), we may smile and consider it entertainment, but we don’t attribute any significant brand values to that event. Nor do we criticise the parent capturing the moment (not for his/her videographing skills, anyway). That’s not what’s important.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to promote your travel agency or sporting goods store online, you’ll be quickly branded amateurish if you don’t achieve the expected quality level for a ‘professional’ operation.

No problem if you’re trying to come across as folksy and down-to-earth, just one of the fellas. But those attributes seldom work, certainly not in big city businesses. Fail.

In summary: online video may be hot, but it ain’t easy (and probably isn’t cheap either).

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We hardly need to tell you that “This Is It” The Michael Jackson Movie launched last night with simultaneous premieres in 16 cities across the globe, but only for a two-week season.

Sony Pictures reportedly paid $60 million for the rights, and they’ve played every Ace in the Movie Marketing deck to ensure that they turn that initial investment into gold.

Time Magazine cites five pieces of marketing magic employed by Sony in their efforts to make this the movie event of the year:

1. The Two-Week Window
   One of Sony’s first marketing moves was to set a deadline for the film public, proclaiming that This Is It would play in theaters only for a two-week run. Can’t you just feel the sense of urgency? “It has event-ized this thing in a huge way,” marvels an industry exec. The prospect of an end date lit a fire under the devoted and even the Jackson-ambivalent.
2. The Advance Sales
   Sony made a hard push for advance ticket sales over and above what most movies command, with the same thrust and hype that live-concert sales get. The result has been impressive: since the Sept. 27 on-sale date, there have been reports of 1,600 advance sellouts.
3. The Quick Turnaround
   Although the frenzy over Jackson’s death has abated, there was a clear mandate to honor — some might say tap into — the international outpouring of grief. “It’s not about exploiting,” says Director Kenny Ortega. “Every corner of this planet, people were reaching out saying, ‘Show us something.’ “
4. The Mystery Factor
   The movie is one of the great secrets in Hollywood. Only a select group of insiders and family members has seen it, and certainly no critics have. Ortega chalks this up to Jackson’s need for opening-night magic. “It was always, Don’t ruin the secrets, don’t ruin the surprises,” says Ortega.
5. The Global Reach
   Perhaps only Michael Jackson could command premieres around the world, from the main event in Los Angeles to London to Seoul. All told, there will be 33 premieres, with 16 synched to begin at the same time and eight featuring a satellite feed showing red-carpet arrivals from the gala in Los Angeles.

So is it working?

The twittersphere has been going crazy since the first screenings started. Predictably, tweets have been either frenetically positive (@MiikoMentz Brilliant, beautiful, poetic and moving. I thoroughly enjoyed it.) or caustically negative (@WillSloanEsq Spent the evening at Michael Jackson’s This Is It. Dare I say that this sloppy, vaguely sleazy film is his perfect epigraph for Mr. Tabloid?). MJ always did polarise people.

Bloomberg is predicting that the movie and CD may generate as much as $400 million in sales worldwide as fans turn out to see and hear the last live performances of the late King of Pop — with around 90% of that revenue going to the singer’s estate, to be applied against the much publicised debts that the original live concert series was intended to repay.

Already fans are asking, nay demanding, to know when the DVD will be coming out. No doubt Sony will have a trick or two up their sleeves when it comes to releasing a whole series of DVD and BluRay releases. Think Special Editions, Extended Special Editions, Director’s Cuts, yada yada yada. After all, there are 120 hours of rehearsal footage with which to work.

Michael Jackson is no longer with us, but the marketing and merchandising machine thunders on.

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Like music videos?

Quite a few people do. Music videos and music-related content are easily YouTube’s most-popular single genre. TubeMogul did the numbers and concluded that the top five music labels alone control 64.52% of all of the views of YouTube’s top 50, and are the top five publishers of all time.

Source:TubeMogul

Now a massive chunk of that content is about to migrate to Vevo.

Vevo, the digital joint venture between two labels representing nearly 60% of the U.S. recorded music market — Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment (SME) — is due to launch in December. It will be powered by (but not owned by) YouTube.

EMI and Warner Music Group are also in discussion to allow Vevo to carry their content, possibly on a non-exclusive basis.

Here’s the pitch, according to the press release:

Music fans will be able to view professionally-created content from UMG’s and SME’s broad array of chart-topping artists through VEVO, the innovative online premium music video hub being built for consumers, advertisers and content owners that will blend the very best in top-notch music content with YouTube’s leading edge video technology and user community. The content will be made available on YouTube through a newly created VEVO channel, on VEVO.com, the service’s marquee destination site, and through a special VEVO branded embedded player. The service will also serve as a syndication platform for additional internet destination sites, expanding the reach of the VEVO brand across the worldwide web.

The Vevo offering is expected to include “professionally produced [high quality] music videos, concerts, original web series, artist-generated videos, and curated user-generated videos.”

What’s so special about Vevo?
Interscope-Geffen-A&M Chairman Jimmy Iovine painted the big picture in an interview earlier this month on paidContent.org:

“Vevo for the first time will give labels the ability to push out our product without having to go through radio or TV stations. Before, we had to make it, ship it and pray for a hit. Now, with Vevo, we can create the content, sell the ads, and even use the data to market new music to people alongside things they already like.”

For the first time in perhaps a decade, the music industry (love it or hate it) expects to regain online control of its content, at least in its original un-mashed, music video format. Control — that’s what makes Vevo such a big deal.

So far, reports suggest that Vevo will play nice and let consumers interact with the content in the same way they currently can on YouTube. It’s an undertaking that needs to honored, both in letter and in spirit, lest consumers backlash.

There are a number of (let’s be generous and call them unintended) side-effects of the Vevo-sization of music, however. There’s no word yet on whether indie musicians can post their own music videos on Vevo without having a Big Music corporate sponsor. We’d expect that particular door to be bolted shut, at least for now, which reduces the chances of serendipitous discovery of new talent by the public at large.

On the other hand, the corridors of YouTube will be curiously quiet without the constant thrum of Big Music. Could be a whole new chance for unrepped talent to tapdance down those empty corridors …

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We mentioned the Tourism Queensland promotion in our earlier article. The campaign continues to make news, although not always for the right reasons. On the positive side, the lucky applicant, Ben Southall was on Oprah last week.

On the not-so-bright side, Australia’s Brisbane Times reports on the aftermath:

The Best Job in the World marketing campaign for Tourism Queensland won the top newspaper advertising award at the weekend, confirming its status as the most awarded ad of the year globally.

Judges at the Caxton Newspaper Awards nominated the ad best in show, handing it the prestigious Quinlivan Black Award for the best newspaper ad of the year.

This brings to almost 40 the number of national and international awards won by the campaign, including three Grands Prix at Cannes, the Oscars of the ad industry, leading the agency behind the idea to claim that it could be the most awarded ad of all time.

The advertising idea of seeking a person to act as caretaker to the islands of the Great Barrier Reef for six months began its journey as a simple classified ad that ran in newspapers around the world. More than 40,000 media stories later it continues to resonate around the world.

Although it put the islands, and arguably Queensland, on the international tourism map, the Brisbane-based agency that came up with the idea, Sapient Nitro, no longer works for Tourism Queensland.

Instead, the state tourism authority handed its multimillion-dollar advertising account to another agency, which has since created a campaign centred on a take-off of the Monkees – complete with a reworked theme tune, Hey Hey It’s Queensland, which has been widely lambasted by the industry.

The irony was not lost on the audience at the Caxtons, who pondered aloud why the same client who bought a campaign that delivered it publicity worth $300 million on a budget of $1.7 million could also commission the latest campaign.

Indeed. Life’s a pitch. Sometimes you win.

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The City of Aspen and the Aspen Chamber Resort Association want YOUR marketing ideas for stimulating Aspen’s economy through special events and “outside of the box” approaches. And they’ve put aside $200,000 to make the winning idea happen.

“A lot of people have some good ideas out there about how to attract visitors to Aspen, fill empty storefronts or raise Aspen’s profile as a destination,” said City Manager Steve Barwick. “We’re hoping to create a way for those ideas to be harvested and vetted, with the best ones implemented.”

You have until Nov. 6 to pitch your idea.

All the submissions will then go to a committee of City, ACRA and Commercial Core and Lodging Commission officials for review. The best ideas then will be presented to Aspen City Council for possible implementation and perhaps funding as well.

“In a way this is a ‘request for proposals’ for ideas,” Barwick said. “But this isn’t a contest with a cash prize, or anything like that. This is Aspen’s citizens pooling their brainpower to come up with some creative ways to help us get through these difficult economic times.”

It’s also a bit of a beauty contest, of course, and a sucking up of free ideas (from everyone but the eventual winner). Still, it’s not compulsory to take part.

One early contender, Qittle, a mobile marketing company, has asked the council for $100,000 to help market its “Live the Dream” contest, in which an individual will be selected to live in Aspen for a year with all expenses paid. In return, that person will work for Qittle hosting a weekly radio/TV show that will air locally and also will be responsible for his or her own blog, where they will share their experience in Aspen and Snowmass with the world.

If that idea sounds somewhat familiar, that’s because it’s “modeled after a similar contest held in Queensland, Australia”, which garnered worldwide attention. [The Bahamas Tourist Office, similarly "inspired by" the Queensland campaign, is running a six-month competition to find aspiring and professional film-makers called The 14 Islands Film Challenge: 14 Islands, 14 Filmmakers, 14 Days, £14000 prize.]

Clearly great minds think alike — or at least copy from the same source material. We advise you to stay well away from the Tourism Queensland “Best Job In The World” concept if you’re pitching an idea for Aspen — too many of your competitors will be spontaneously inventing the same idea. Oh, and a copycat idea won’t “garner worldwide attention” either.

Here are the details of the Tourism Queensland promotion, just so you don’t get confused:

MINING ASPEN FOR IDEAS: THE DETAILS

Here’s what the “Mining Aspen for Ideas” Response Form includes:

Share your thoughts for stimulating Aspen’s economy through special events and outside of the box approaches to business.

How would you …

• Increase visitation?
• Showcase Aspen?
• Help local businesses?

Information you need to provide:

• Explain your idea:
• How will this idea stimulate Aspen’s economy?
• How much funding (if any) would be needed for your idea?
• Of that funding (if any), how much would you be asking the City of Aspen to contribute?
• Other than funds, what else would your idea require? (human capital, etc.)

There aren’t any terms and conditions currently associated with the RFP, so you’d be well advised to stick some copyright notices on your submission to protect your IP if you don’t win.

Read more about the RFP here.

Enter here.

Good luck.

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