Viral Marketing, 5 Takes, and Discovery Television
I noticed recently after downloading an educational program from discovery channel…that TLC, Discovery and Travel Channel are really on the ball when it comes to interactive programming like 5. Ok, so Ginny and I are liking this kid Bevis who stars in Take 5.. a show on the Travel Channel. Kudo’s to discovery channel… wasn’t that another Ted Turner deal. I’m starting to like him more and more and he’s starting to look like a blind magi of some sort the way he talks and swaggers about looking as if he’s thinking into some deep consciousness that he fell into. He’s smart. So the show’s premise is that these kids travel the U.S. and Europe on small budgets and film the whole thing with a skeleton crew. The show isn’t over produced and focused in on the interpersonal dramas of the travelers as MTV might do. It’s highly interactive online. The travelers visit spots posted on the website’s message boards and keep blogs and vlogs along the way. As we were watching last night, I was able to read the same messages that the cast members were reading to make decisions on their interaries. The online community is pretty big. There were over 50,000 votes cast on their next destination city of San Francisco and they are accepting message board entries on where to visit. They publish the show via Itunes, the members capture their own footage that is featured on the vlogs, they have online chat and the cast members are picked up from user submitted videos. It’s interactive at it’s best and I can foresee a huge market for this with its tiny budgets, quick turnaround time, and general viewer involvement. Chase bank sponsors the whole show and I would imagine that they are very happy with the results. If you get a chance ( and have cable 🙂 check out the show.
Update: 5/14/2010 – Half of those links are dead, so you might start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Takes