Alloy Media + Marketing has combined its multicultural media services and placement division , American Multicultural Marketing, with its strategic marketing and promotional services arm , AMP Urban to create described as:
the first full service company specializing in developing lifestyle relevant strategies and media outreach that appeal to the passions, interests and attitudes that drive the purchase decisions of the rising Hispanic, African American and Urban consumer segments. Offering a wide range of proprietary services including consumer insights, strategic planning, experiential programming and media buying, research and placement services.
Alloy Access is off to a strong start with:
Heineken, Rockport, the National Association of Hispanic Publications (NAHP), Soft Sheen-Carson, BlockSavvy and MTV3 as premier partners of the newly formed division.
The team has been responsible for creative development and execution of such successful recent campaigns as the AXE Black Filmmaker’s Series and Heineken’s Red Star Soul program. With the establishment of an exclusive partnership with the NAHP, Alloy Access now serves as the largest provider of multicultural newspaper advertising planning and placement services in the country.
The press release also mentions that a report on the New Urban Consumer will be released later this month.
I'm hoping to get more on that soon and will follow up.
I have to admit I like their orientation but I'm not sure that New Marketing is such a hot term. It's an incredibly 20th century phrase but perhaps it works with their target market or with the particular timing given that marketing is going through such radical changes.
Overall they seem to be off to a nice start. They've got a and a , they've got a group of people who already blog and podcast, they've got offices in big cities like New York, London and San Francisco, they've got a , they're in and they just got written up in ProHipHop!
I don't know if they're going to do a MySpace profile but, in some ways, it makes more sense to create them for a particular client since folks are probably more interested in a MySpace profile for a new movie than for a marketing company.
Ditto for YouTube. Not that crayon won't necessarily do those things but setting up a client with a MySpace profile brings them into the process in a way that promoting them on one's own MySpace profile never would.
Here's a that tells you more, though I'll have to say that the elevator pitch leaves something to be desired, which may explain why it's buried down the page.
Maybe they don't believe in traditional elevator pitches.
In any case, despite my minor jabs, I look forward to seeing how their practice develops.
Update:
I just went back and read an email from and he seems to be emphasizing the Second Life office/island, seen here in , as was Jaffe in an email he sent out.
I'll have to be honest, I feel like I've done more work than I should have to figure out what these guys are doing. I got the general idea right away, this is online marketing 2.0 or whatever would indicate people marketing online in a way that doesn't simply replicate offline marketing but that intelligently responds to the emergence of online society.
But I can't tell if they handle online ad buys or only do conversational things or what?
But in trying to clarify how they're positioning themselves, I have to wonder how all this would look to the folks who remain baffled by blogs and social networks. Or is it enough to know that these guys are well regarded and can handle your online marketing needs?
I should note that I decided not to look at other bloggers' reactions to crayon and I haven't been checking marketing blogs for at least a week and haven't really read any news so I'm writing this post based off two emails and what I see online. This way you're getting my immediate, off the cuff response which can be a good thing since people apparently evaluate most things at first glance without necessarily knowing the context for what they're examining.
Again, I look forward to seeing where this goes and do wish crayon the best of luck!
Posted by Clyde on October 26, 2006 in Ruckus works directly with 65+ colleges across the country to provide college students with free entertainment media downloads; completely legal and virus free. Ruckus visitors must have an .edu email address to qualify for membership and they visit the site to download free music and new releases, socialize with other members, get new movies, and check out the “album of the week” at each school.
Ruckus brings us a pure 18-24 year old audience of college students, says [Vizi|Media President, Andrew] Moskowitz, adding that the signing adds prestige to our Entertainment and Video site offerings; both are key demographics for many of our advertisers”. . .
Ruckus offers advertisers customizable marketing opportunities including content integration, email notifiers, user based surveys, “Themed Programs Sponsorships”, and video ads.
As the first person to form an independent record label based around the creation and promotion of hip-hop music, Uncle Luke has impacted the world of rap music, sex, business, law and politics simultaneously over the past 2 decades. Campbell is currently promoting his tell all, three-disc box set containing two audio books and greatest hits CD entitled Uncle Luke – My Life Freaky Times, which chronicle’s his impressive, history making career in music and film.
Press contact: Hanif Sumner, 212-999-5585 ext. 250 or hsumner@5wpr.com
Headquartered in New York, with an office in Los Angeles, 5W Public Relations (www.
5wpr.com), the nation's fastest growing independent PR firm for 2005 2004, maintains practice areas specializing in technology, corporate, consumer, entertainment, crisis communications, investor relations, event management and public affairs. Described by a leading PR trade magazine as “aggressive in a way that clearly resonates with clients looking for a firm staffed with type A-plus personalities, a BS-free approach, and results from Day One,” 5W’s culture is aggressive, energetic, fast-paced and focused.
The Company boasts a diversified client roster second to none, including: Fortune 500 mainstay EDS, Evian Natural Spring Water, NICE Systems, VeriSign, McDonald’s Corporation, Restaurant Associates/Patina, the nation’s largest multi-concept restaurant group, The HealthCentral Network, 530 store retail chain United Retail Group/Avenue Stores, Seagram’s Coolers, Benny Hinn Ministries, The Pritikin Longevity Center Spa, Lassie, the world’s most famous dog, celebrities including NBA Star Jalen Rose, Lil’ Kim, Ice Cube, Nick Cannon and producer Scott Storch, a plethora of publicly traded technology companies, and a variety of other global interests, national corporations, high-profile individuals, regional businesses, government agencies and academic institutions. The agency was named “Boutique Agency of The Year” by a leading PR Trade Magazine.
Posted by Clyde on August 3, 2006 in I was checking out an AdFreak post about an that one of the commenters thinks is a fairly direct ripoff of a Dave Chappelle skit.
I can't speak to that cause I didn't see that skit but it did lead me to , a great site about the creative edge in commercial production featuring lots of content from the magazine.
This month includes an excellent article by Mark Pytlik on including the move by music supervisors to bypass labels and go directly to musicians who the labels themselves may have bypassed.
I feel like I haven't left the A R world .
. . I feel like I'm more involved in it now than I even was before.
I'm always looking for new acts, new bands and new songwriters to get plays for commercials. I'm getting stuff sent to me on a constant basis, and I'm always listening, because you never know where it's going to come from. It's kind of ironic.
The labels will turn down these songwriters or bands, and I'll wind up finding them and getting them placed inside commercials. That winds up hurting the labels more than anything - I think they're kind of starting to feel the damage from that.
Sarah Gavigan, founder of Ten Music, a company that finds commercial work for its roster of independent labels speculates on what the future holds:
None of this has happened, and a lot is speculation, but there are all kinds of different brands that are looking for a way to gain cultural validity.
They can do that by joining forces with labels and musicians, not just borrowing from them, but joining forces with them, or maybe even financing their album . . .
I think that's the next logical step. I think brands are going to replace labels. Especially since a band like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah showed we don't need a label, all we need is distribution.
They sold 25,000 albums out of their apartment in Brooklyn. So, is there a brand in existence they would be willing to lend themselves to, and collaborate with, in a way that could give them the money to do things a label would traditionally do for them? It could happen.
Hell, yeah, it could happen. Lots of nice stuff in this article including some short, blistering critiques of the music industry.
is an awesome resource and you can check out things for free but after seeing a couple of articles they do require free registration.
Though I'm experiencing registration burnout, I had absolutely no qualms about quickly signing up.
Posted by Clyde on May 30, 2006 in I received an email from Michael Miraflor, a contributor to , regarding my post about the . He was nice enough to ok my sharing a section:
Check out .
. . Remnants of the (now-abandoned) urban-flavored Sprite campaign litter the home page, and link to .
There is a countdown on the landing page.
Intriguing in theory, but there is absolutely no buzz in advertising/marketing circles about it, mainly because it is a strategy that was beaten to death by Microsoft in anticipation of the Xbox 360 (the infamous www.origenxbox360.
com countdown comes to mind). So in hip hop's defense, the demise of hip hop culture as a lead in Sprite's marketing cache can be attributed to poor media strategy and planning by their online agency as much as external cultural forces (i.e.
decline of hip hop as a cultural force, etc).
As far as Sprite changing agencies from Ogilvy to CP+B, it is worth noting that CP+B jacked some hip hop terminology to market the VW Jetta in late 2005/early 2006. Here are two of a handful of creative executions that played on a few urban phrases:
I'm not saying that CP+B (also the minds behind the love/hate Burger King King and subservient chicken) understands hip hop culture, mind you, but they are more aware of culture than 80% of agencies out there.
As I responded to Michael, I'll be writing more about Crispin Porter + Bogusky, aka CP+B, in the near future.
News RSS