Greg Verdino: Brands on fire (with a little help from crayon)

Y'all know that I don't usually blog about clients but I figure I can get away with it every once in a while. Today, one of crayon's clients, a new media company called Firebrand, held a press conference at Advertising Week to announce their upcoming launch. (crayon made sure that a bunch of bloggers got to be there in person, alongside their MSM counterparts -- and we'll be working the social mediasphere through launch and beyond.)

So what is Firebrand, exactly?

It's a new, opt-in entertainment and marketing destination that gives consumers interactive access to their favorite brands, products and promotions. They program the best and coolest TV commercials the way MTV used to program music videos (with "Commercial Jockeys," even - think MTV's vee-jays with a serious jones for good ads) and are slated to be the first multi-platform network to "go live" simultaneously on television, the web and mobile.

Firebrand doesn't launch until October 22nd, but you can see a sneak peek in this video.

[Feed and email readers click through. Everyone else can see additional promo and demo videos here.]

Now, those readers with finely tuned bullshit sensors might be asking, "So wait a second, did Verdino really just write 'best and coolest tv commercials' without any sense of irony?"

Well, yes I did... because what sucks most about tv commercials? The fact that they are interruptive, at least when they're crammed into traditional commercial breaks.

But what happens when commercials don't interrupt other content but actually are the content -- branded content to be precise, but content nonetheless? Lots of people tune into those funny ad shows in TV, watch the Super Bowl just to see the ads, or watch and distribute interesting ads they find on video sharing sites. So why not a site that hand-picks and programs nothing but good commercials?

Check out the vids and pics, join our Facebook group, or sign up to get an alert when Firebrand launches -- and let me know what you think. Can Firebrand do for commercials what MTV did for music videos in the 1980s? Can Firebrand -- yikes -- revitalize the 30-second spot?

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About

Greg Verdino is a futurist, marketer, writer and speaker who works as Chief Strategy Officer at marketing consultancy crayon LLC. His first book, microMARKETING, is due from McGraw-Hill in summer 2010. This blog looks at trends in media and marketing, as these industries grapple with the changes being brought on by disruptive technologies, new business imperatives and the rise of the empowered consumer.

July 2009