PIP Marketing
Like millions of others, I went and watched the movie The Break-upÂ? (is it weirdÂ? to go to to that movieÂ? with someone you just started seeing?). The movie was pretty funny, but what really got my attention was the trailer for one of the movies Coming Soon. I don’t even remember what the title of the movie was, but I noticed at the very end there was a message, “To join the community, visit our MySpace page at .” The site received so much free publicity from radio stations across North America and probably the world, and now has reached a point where even the movie industry can’t ignore the power of the beast. It reminded me ofÂ? a line in something Michael Arrington posted: with nearly 80 million members, Myspace is an entire economy unto itself.
When we were down in Seattle last week, we mentioned talking to Mr. Arrington about an article he was writing about widgets. He tipped us off about an article he was writingÂ? regarding TagworldWidgets. We had developed a website, FKMarry.com, and of course had developed our own widget to help feed the beast, but this was an example of taking that to the next level. We considered working frantically to get it completed to coincide with the official release and the TechCrunch post, but decided against it. Today that’s one of the many things I will tackle.
Steve Rubel has dubbed this Picture in Picture Marketing.Â? There are several examples of this being used very effectively by those deeply rooted within the industry, either through their own personal interest and use of the Internet, or through their profession. However, we are suprised that the movie industry, an industry that has been so slow to adapt and effectively capitalize on the Internet, has been so quick to move towards this arena for potential marketing opportunities. I mentioned that I didn’t actually remember the name of the movie, but one thing that I did note was that the movie did have the potential to create this type of cult-like following, but what type of big-market media doesn’t? If the product makes it to the mainstream, there are so many people available as a potential userbase that it can easily facilitate this type of group or sub-community within MySpace, and if the product remains somewhat underground, there is usually a closer following (or higher hit rate).
We’ve written twoÂ? articles (that we deem to be relevant in this case)Â? thatÂ? outline the direction that media will take. The first was titled Net ContentÂ? and the second was MySpace offers 24. Net Content talked about the industry moving towards the online arena as a platform for the distribution of their product, and MySpace discusses the actual implementation of our prediction (we weren’t alone in that prediction, but it’s nice to toot our own horn). We’ve even touched on this type of marketing, and of course use it ourselves.Â? After being so slow and stagnant for so long, theÂ? big suprise is how quickly industry is now realizing and using what the rest of us peons have been aware of for so long - there’s success to be had if you can find a way to feed the 80 million strong beast.