Victoria's Secret is known for eye-popping video and print campaigns promoting its sexy lingerie and current stable of shapely models, but now it's wooing with audio. In an unusual twist on branded entertainment, a music-based cross-promotion is seeing VS models promoting their favorite tunes on Thefuture.fm, a website which features DJ mixes.

Billed as VS Radio, the branded audio channel includes exclusive dance mixes from Los Angeles DJ Lindsay Luv, promoting the brand via her Facebook and Twitter accounts, with a photo of Luv and Victoria's Secret model "angels" as the DJ's cover photo on her Facebook Timeline. Victoria’s Secret has about 18.5 million fans/likes on Facebook.Continue reading...

It's a well known fact that the brand value of dead celebrities lives far beyond the celebrities themselves. Bob Marley may have died in 1981, but his name has made him immortal, at least in terms of earning power. Elvis continues to have perennial brand presence, getting an extra boost from Graceland's year-long celebration of his life in this, the 35th anniversary of his death.

But this past weekend, a whole new form of dead celebrity worship came to life at the Coachella music festival in California. On Sunday night, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog performed "live" on stage with Tupac Shakur, the rapper who was killed in 1996. Of course, Dre and Snoop performed live; Tupac's performance was a holographic video with updated audio tailored to the crowd. Still, the image was so seemingly alive and so stunning that it may prompt a Tupac tour, according to The Wall Street Journal.Continue reading...

That’s Hunter and Bear's 2012 birthday party teased in the video above.

In 2010, as we reported, a Tipp-Ex ad featuring a hunter and a bear in the woods was the first interactive video ever on YouTube. 

In the first season of the adventures of the Hunter & the Bear, “A hunter shoots a bear” asked viewers to "White and Rewrite THE STORY." The campaign generated more than 50 Million views on YouTube, was shared 1.2 million times on Facebook and generated 220k tweets. The viral buzz created 30% more business for the brand during the back-to-school market and garnered the campaign more than 20 international awards. Continue reading...

It's always a challenge for a brand to shift its demographic focus. But that's what Denny's hopes to do, with a novel Web-only campaign.

The restaurant chain, whose television advertising generally targets families and older consumers, is breaking out of traditional media with a video series running only on CollegeHumor.com, with little mention elsewhere except Denny's Facebook page. The series launched about a year ago; "Season Two" has just begun.

Called "Always Open," the web video series, according to Denny's chief marketing officer Frances Allen, is designed to bring Denny's pitch, "America's Diner is Always Open," to Millennials, ages roughly 18 to 30. Allen tells the New York Times that the new video series offers "an engaging brand moment for millennials" that "communicates our brand message that diners are really welcoming places where everyone can come as they are."Continue reading...

Ford really likes this reality-show thing. Its latest experiment, Escape Routes, has yet to reach mid-season on NBC, and the company announces another series with a similar format to be produced with Yahoo.

Yahoo and Ford will welcome the availability in May of Ford's first all-electric car, the Focus Electric, with Plugged In, which Yahoo is calling its first reality competition series. It'll be broadcast exclusively on the Yahoo! Screen service, and will feature six two-person teams competing against one another in a series fo challenges centered on the chance to win a Focus Electric.

Sounds a lot like Escape Routes, the Saturday-night series entering its third week right now on NBC. The teams of Millennials are competing for cash (and air time, of course), but the real star of this trailblazing program is the 2013 version of the Escape SUV. And the first episodes show a lot of the vehicle. Continue reading...

Because it owned the house, it was predictable that Ford's new reality-TV show on NBC, Escape Routes, would find every angle to tout the automaker's new 2013 Ford Escape — the namesake inspiration for the show. And it did.

But what viewers of the first installment of the show might not have expected was to see a number of other blue-chip brands — including McDonald's, J.C. Penney, several Procter & Gamble marques, even Ford rival Volkswagen — go along for the ride.

The six-week Escape Routes series, which debuted on March 31st, is the latest way for Ford to push the envelope with new-era marketing formats, where it has demonstrated industry leadership.

And while the first installment was hardly Emmy-worthy appointment viewing, Ford executives tell brandchannel they're pleased with the social TV meets branded entertainment experiment.Continue reading...

Delivering on a promise made by co-owner Justin Timberlake to “bring sexy back to Myspace,” Fox Digital Entertainment and Myspace have announced Let's Big Happy, a seven-episode web series starring Andrew W.K. that debuts on March 28th.

Taco Bell is sponsoring the new web series, which features bands from the chain's Feed the Beat music program which supplies bands with free food while on tour, including performances by Chiddy Bang, We Are Scientists, Math the Band, Generationals, and the Gay Blades.

"The branded entertainment space has evolved over the last few years by doing what is typically labeled as 'organic' integration all the way up to a sponsor wrapping themselves around a program that never mentions their product,” commented Fox Digital Entertainment SVP Matt Glotzer to Billboard.Continue reading...

Ford and NBC have gotten together to launch an unprecedented bit of product placement: a prime-time reality series on network television that is built entirely around a particular product supplied by the brand, in a co-produced show by both parties.

Escape Routes is a six-week show that will air on Saturday nights on NBC and on mun2, NBCUniversal's bicultural network for young Latino-Americans, beginning March 31, with repeats on nbc.com and mun2.com the next day. The mini-series will focus on the adventures of six two-person teams involved in a unique road-trip competition in their 2013 Ford Escape SUVs. Prizes along the way include the red-hot Nike FuelBand. The grand prize: $100,000 plus two all-new Ford Escapes for the winning team.

While acknowledging how P&G and Walmart have collaborated on a made-for-TV family-friendly movies, some of which have run on NBC, Crystal Worthem, Ford's brand content and alliances manager, maintained that Escape Routes is "absolutely groundbreaking." She told brandchannel that "the creative piece of this is centrally launching a product and a brand new, compelling reality show at the same time."Continue reading...