A yearlong battle finally built to a crescendo on Sept. 5, when three musical acts faced off in the Hollywood House of Blues. After the smoke cleared, a rock group from Seattle named Fall From Grace walked away with a $1 million record contract.
However, the real battle for marketing agency KSL Media was to drive traffic to NewBodogMusic.net, an online record label and sponsor of the Bodog Battle of the Bands. The elaborate campaign typifies KSL’s approach, which Chief Executive Hank Cohen calls “entrepreneurial media.”
“If you look at the world of media agencies, a majority are these massive holding companies. They take media to a commoditized level,” Cohen said. “We have found there is a market of mid-sized companies that spend $2 million to $50 million per year, that can’t be serviced by these massive holding companies.”
Cohen believes willingness to take managed risks lies at the heart of entrepreneurship, as illustrated with the Bodog campaign. The client decided to differentiate Bodog from all other music contests by offering a $1 million prize.
The battle started in October 2006 with about 7,000 bands uploading songs to the Bodog site and vying for fan attention. The bands competed at 300 concerts around the country, and based on audience reaction, KSL whittled the field to 10 finalists.
Enter Fuse Network, a digital online broadcaster that posted 10 weekly episodes of a reality show about the music contest. Each episode eliminated one band, thanks to a panel of judges presided over by ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon. The battle culminated in Hollywood, where fans, voting via text message, selected the winner after hearing sets by three finalists.
KSL Media conceived the contest, produced the reality show, and coordinated the events all part of a campaign to cement the Bodog brand with 18- to 24-year-old males without the use of traditional advertising.
As for results, Cohen declined to reveal numbers, but he said Bodog’s Web traffic and unique visitor count have risen 30 percent to 40 percent on a monthly basis since the battle began.
Campaign Breaks
WongDoody Los Angeles is the agency behind the new “Pizza Knight” campaign for Roundtable Pizza. A fully armored Knight, defender of family togetherness and quality pizza, appears in four TV spots, five radio ads, posters and in-store signage. The campaign broke Sept. 10 in western U.S. markets, including L.A. “Our goal is to make Pizza Knight part of the cultural lexicon,” said Tracy Wong, Wongdoody chairman. “He is noble yet quirky and can relate to both adults and kids.” Oscar De La Hoya has recorded three Spanish and one English spot for White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights. The spots encourage young couples to come to White’s new Oscar De La Hoya Labor & Delivery Center. The campaign, developed by Enlace Communications in Santa Monica, broke last week. … Kastner & Partners in Santa Monica is the new ad agency of record for dealnews.com, a Web site that reports the best prices for computer equipment. Kastner will seek to grow traffic with an out-of-home ad campaign scheduled to break for the upcoming Christmas shopping season.
French Gorilla
Gorilla Nation Media, the Hollywood-based ad sales firm representing more than 500 independent Web sites, has signed a strategic alliance with NetWorldMedia, the first French-language online ad network in Canada.
The agreement allows Gorilla Nation to represent NetWorldMedia clients in negotiations with large advertisers. “NetWorldMedia’s network of more than 200 mostly French-language content sites, added to our own 500, creates a quality alternative for national advertisers that wish to reach Canadians from coast to coast,” explained Walder Amaya, director of operations for Gorilla Nation Canada.
Montreal-based NetWorldMedia brings more than 450 million page-views per month to the deal. Some of its biggest French-language sites are LesAffaires.com, QuebecPeche.com, Sympatico/MSN, AutoConseils.ca, MonClasseur.com and MontrealWeb.com.
Gorilla Nation specializes in representing sites with unique visitor tallies between 1 million and 15 million.
Agencies & Accounts
Cimarron Group in Hollywood has won a review by the Pasadena Convention & Visitors Bureau to “re-brand” the city as a tourist destination. Specifically, the campaign aims beyond the Tournament of Roses to showcase Pasadena’s architecture, museums and natural beauty attractions. Cimarron Group has experience from its Santa Barbara Convention & Visitors Bureau account. Allison & Partners has hired Dawn Wilcox as general manager of its L.A. office. The PR shop’s main clients include YouTube, Hasbro, Nestle USA and Sony. Scott Pansky, the co-founder and previous GM, will focus on marketing the firm nationally. Wilcox formerly headed Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide’s L.A. office.
Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 237.
