Sunday, July 29, 2007

Leatherheads Group on Facebook

If you worked on the movie Leatherheads, I have set up a group on Facebook where we can meet and share experiences and keep in touch.

Here is the link to the group.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2428741877

Integrating Media into Social Networks

The shift has been happening for a few years with MySpace leading the pack with the integration of media within social networks. Facebook is now gaining momentum with applications which allow members to list magazines, books, and music which they prefer on their profiles.

The music applications iLike even integrates into iTunes and YouTube where members can share music they like and recommend and their friends can listen to it and purchase the music from iTunes.

This is an important trend further adding to the viral natural of the internet and the way music becomes distributed. The question will be how do musicians and music publishng companies continue to keep up with these trends.

Will this trend mean that international music tastes will become more prevalent or will music become more like McDonalds, with heavier influences from larger global music publishing companies.

Does this trend mean that a listener will also personalize their music and music tastes so they receive only that music which matches up with their tastes.

What role with traditional media critics have in influencing recommendations.

If you are an publisher in media, how will you embrace these changes? What roles will you take reach your audience?

We live in interesting times.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Official Still Photo From Leatherheads

 


George Clooney, John Krasinski and Renee Zellweger in the Speakeasy for Leatherheads
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The On Ramp to Leatherheads Marketing

I happen to love marketing and public relations and the entertainment industry, so I am very excited to see the beginning of Universal Pictures starting to drip out the marketing for the Leatherheads movie.

In May, George Clooney, was in Oceans 13 and had a segment on Jay Leno's Tonight show where Leatherheads got a brief mention.

In mid June, John Krasinski, of "The Office" was the featured star in the movie "License to Wed".

Now this week, USA Today, had a still photo on its website of what looks like the "Speakeasy" scene in the Leatherheads movie with the three stars, Clooney, Krasinski and Renee Zellweger.

I continue to monitor the Universal Studios website to see when the movie trailers will be available. It looks as if Leatherheads is "on deck" to have its own website launched. My predication is that it will be up and running with the start of the NFL pre-season and that NBC (who is the sister company of Universal) will start promoting Leatherheads on its Sunday Night Football broadcast, since Leatherheads is a fictionalized account of the era when professional football was first organized.

This marketing will build to a crescendo around Thanksgiving when all the games are on and the most important NFL games of the week will be on Sunday Night on NBC.

Since Leatherheads has a few "fictional" teams, we may also see merchandising of sweatshirts, leather helmuts, and other movie paraphanalia.

And don't forget Universal Studios during the holiday season as well.

Leatherheads seems to be perfectly positioned for an exciting and creative promotional cascade over the next few months.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

The Simpsons and Me

Well, the Simpson Movie is about to be realeased this week and my home town of Springfield, NJ was in the running to host its world premiere. USA Today ran a contest to have each Springfield in the United States send in a video to let the producers know why their Springfield was the one where the Simpson's live.

My home town of Springfield, NJ had advertised for people to meet at my high school for the filming of the video. I was watching ABC's World News tonight last week and we were one of 3 Springfields featured on the story.

After the votes were compiled Springfield, VT was declared the winner to host the premiere. They had a guy rolling a giant donut down a hill in their video.

All the other Springfields will also have the movie shown at a special screening. Funny thing is, my Springfield doesn't even have a movie theatre.

Hmmmm....now that's something Bart Simpson may have to change.

Friday, July 06, 2007



Excerpt from Dickinson Magazine - Summer 2007
"Tangled Up in the New 'Net"


Such social-networking sites have exploded in the last five years. They range from “placeblogging” sites, where neighbors share gossip about the latest mugging, the new playground or house on the block, to broader, more long-distance networks, such as YouTube, where people share videos; LinkedIn, which connects employers and job seekers; and MySpace and Facebook, where users can create personal profiles of themselves, including photos and a “friends list” of those allowed to visit and post on their sites.

Andy Kaplan ’79 is a longtime entrepreneur in social media who has been in the forefront of several technology waves, beginning in the early 1980s. As a financial analyst at HBO, he sent the first spreadsheet electronically through a modem—then considered nothing short of miraculous. Later he helped popularize many forms of mass distribution, such as blast faxes.

Now from Charlotte, N.C., he runs his own company, eWarrior, which equips businesses for the world of social media. He helps transform companies so that they can compete in the modern marketplace, where Web 2.0 is increasingly important, by advising them about a variety of Web-based strategies and tools for pricing, selling and promoting their products.

“There are so many tools that companies can use to their competitive advantage,” says Kaplan. “For example, they can meet ‘connectors’ through a large professional and personal network such as LinkedIn, send personalized phone and video messages instead of e-mail to their customers or promote their products through blogging.”

Launching Facebook Enthusiast Brand

This is my 3rd day on Facebook and I have already realized how much this application is going to impact our lives. Facebook is passing eBay in daily usage and is on the growth curve to possibly catch up to Google one day.

In May, Mark Zuckerberg announced at his developers conference some incredible facts:
1) Facebook is growing by 100,000 users a day worldwide
2) Ten percent of Canada is on Facebook
3) Facebook is currently 60% non-college age and is projected to be 75% by year end.

With that in mind and a community growing quickly, I have decided to launch today a new brand called the "Facebook Enthusiast". With this brand, we have set up a group within Facebook with this name and an accompanying blog of the same name. Facebook Enthusiast

I look forward to meeting you on Facebook one day.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

Facebook - My first 24 hours

Okay, I have to admit it. It was a lot of fun playing on Facebook. After a few years of LinkedIn, Facebook feels like a party. It leads to deeper relationships much more quickly and is not about your resume. It is really about relationships. I admit, I believe you must need a sense of humor and perhaps be somewhat liberal and creative in your thinking to really understand facebook.

What I think Facebook does extremely well in the "adult" world is to appeal to a demographic which LinkedIn sore misses, "The Creative Class". This class is not about recruiters and jobseekers and vc's. It is about creatively connecting with each other in ways, I could have believed to understand.

As much as there are 3 degrees of separation, somehow on day 1, I have become "friends" with Michael Moore, who I admire for his newest movie Sicko. His e-mail address happened to be in my address book, so when I first set up my profile in Facebook, it asked me if I wanted to invite people from my address books. I was able to go in and select people to invite to connect. It turned out that Michael Moore was in my address book. So instead of sending him a long and boring, why do I want to connect, once connected, I "sent him a drink"...yes, there is an add on that allowed me to send him a drink of my choice, in this case. a glass of champagne to toast his new movie. Also, as part of Facebook, you see what groups and other activities people are involved with so you can also join. There was a group for his movie Sicko, so I joined that. I also saw a group called "I love Michael Moore"....Do you know how I found out about it?...I was looking at my profile screen on LinkedIn and saw that Michael Moore (my Friend) had just joined this group. It was right there on my screen.

For an example: (click on the image below of my friends status updates)



This is somewhat voyeuristic, however, we have a real way to take a peek into other peoples lives. From this screen some friends are traveling by train into London, going to the gym, sleeping off a party, or finishing a project. Another, as found a new band to be a guest for her podcast.

A friend from New Orleans has invited me to join her humor club and also sent me a "bite" to become a "Zombie". Again, a funny way to say to someone, let's connect and have some fun while we are doing it.

To me, day one on Facebook has been a blast and actually has in some very unique way, helped me to become better friends or deepening relationships, by showing more of my life and personality online.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

SNL -- Weekend Update iPhone Special

Steve Jobs talking about the iPhone.

There is only one "i" in iPhone


Okay, it is out now, released into the world. Well, what has changed? What is the momentous shift in our lives we expected? Oh, yes an iPhone, hmmm, I always wondered about Steve Jobs and his naming of things with "i". is it really an "i"nternet phone or is it an "i" phone. An "i" phone meaning status, such as "i" have one of these cutting edge, change my life phones and "u" don't.

All you IBM PC'ers out there, okay, really, Mr. Jobs has tried to move you over to be Mac lovers for over 20 years and he was able to move most of your sons and daughters to thinking my way... the "i" way...like the phrase "my way or the highway". Oh, yes, I can see things from "u" on my phone such as "youtube". Mr. Jobs says --- Thank "u" for all the free content for the "i"phone.

And then promoting "i"Tunes is B "o" n "o" from the British rock group "u"2. He was in one of those "i"pod commercials, I can only think that all this money to pay for a simple phone could be used to help the poor in "A"frica. Wonder if those in Darfur, were lined up for the "i" products. Oh, yes, they were but it was r"i"ce.

As we approach, 07/07/07, just in time for the Live "e"arth day, where all the "i"phone users can watch some of the concerts from around the world, hoping they will change the world from global warming, I can only imagine, how all of these "i"phone "u"sers will be dumping and not rec"y"cling their phones in a "y"ear or so to get the one that actually runs on a better network from "A"T&T.

ttyl.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

So, you want to be an actor - my first acting class

Vince Paul, casting director of Gospel Hiil, called me this week to tell me how much he liked the mediamensch blog and the stories and photos from my nascent acting career. Vince is not only casting director, but an actor,author, producer, agent, and entrepreneur.

We began to discuss his business and background. Vince authored a book and DVD called "The Talent Guide" which is a beginners guide to acting and modeling. He wanted my advice on how to create some awareness and sales momentum on the internet. I told him about my "real job" as a sales and marketing technology strategist for my company called eWarrior LLC and my knowledge of these cutting edge areas such as "Blogging and Social Networks (www.linktocharlotte.com is one of my ventures)

Vince invited me to his beginning class class for actors called "Launching your Career", so that I could get a better idea of who he was and what type of information would be on the DVD.

I arrived Saturday morning, to his offices and led to the back where he had a classroom with about 25 students watching part of a DVD about acting and modeling career. As in any industry, sometimes the smallest advantages in moving forward and getting ahead quickly comes with being prepared. That is what this 3 hour class taught us.

The first subject was regarding how to put together your head shot and resume. We saw various "before and after" headshots, which were the ones that were originally submitted or used by the actor and the after, showing how makeup, clothing, lighting and background. We clearly understood now that actors come in all ages, shapes and sizes from babies to senior citizens. For different ages there are different ways to handle the photo or headshot submission.

On the resume side, I found this to be very informative and asked a few questions because now I actually have experience with over 10 days on a film production. An actor resume is basically three columns, the show you were in the role you had and the director, production company or location. The resume unlike your regular business resume includes you height, weight (we were told not to lie), age, hair color and eye color.

For the basic beginning actor, many times an extras casting director, will choose you because he sees you have experience on a set and know what is called "set etiquette". Also because most days of filming are long (12 to 14 hours), they like to see that you stayed on the set all day and didn't leave. This is so important because once you are in a movie or scene, if you leave and the need to shoot anothe part of the scene, for continuity of the film you need to be in the shot, no matter how small your role.

The other thing I learned was the difference between applying for a modeling or print ad job and an acting job. For the modeling jobs, your picture IS your resume. The trick with your picture in this case would be to make you picture look like an ad you might see in magazine. He showed us an example of a child's photo resume or what is known as "composite card", where it was posed like a GAP store advertisement.

We also learned about the difference between theater, commercials, television and film. There are many differences in being in each medium and success in one does not guarantee success in another.

One thing I did learn and was not clear about, was the difference between an agent and a casting director. The agent represents the actor and the casting director works for the production company working calling on agents to find specific talent they need.

The last part we discussed was pay and what would be realistic pay for work. For jobs that were professionally shot and where an agent was involved an actor with some experience might expect $500 per day or more for a corporate training film or commercial. In some cases, agents may also be able to negotiate "residuals" for an actor in which an actor would be paid for each time the commercial is shown. I had a flashback to my first job at WNBC radio where a few of the other interns I worked with were in roles in "Milk is a Natural" and "Coca Cola" commercials. I didn't realize how much they were making....If I only new then what I know now.

Now, go "Break a Leg"