How the Fab Five have changed marketing…
At last week’s WebmasterWorld PubConference VI, Andy Borland gave an interesting and humorous keynote on new business models. The presentation was greatly welcomed by the audience due to its mainstream nature.
Boldly going where few have gone before, Borland made the speech memorable by noting the marketing potential of an unlikely show.
“‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ was a message from God for me,” he said, confessing that on New Years Day he watched a marathon of the popular reality show instead of college football.
The “Fab Five” have invaded mainstream America, affecting more than just popular culture. From a business perspective, the show is a revelation, Borland says, because it provides a high quality of entertainment while at the same time nailing product placement on the head. Each star of the show specializes in a different area, such as hair, food, and of course fashion. At the end of every episode, they always mention a particular product and how to use it. Whenever these products are featured, Borland says their sales go up 300 percent. He predicts this could be a new type of product placement.
TiVo. He also mentioned the “one-of-a-kind service” TiVo, asking the audience what TiVo sells. The response was advertising-free television. “No,” he said, “they really sell marketing data.” TiVo specializes in digital video records (DVRs) that allow users to record their favorite shows and fast forward through advertisements. TiVo tracks which advertisements people fast forward through and sells that information to marketers.
Gone Fishin’ He also discussed business models such as Fishing World – which covers the news in the fishing industry. The website holds fishing contests, reports on who caught the “big fish” and more. Essentially, it has become a huge portal for fishing – especially for the 51% of American fisherman who love bass fishing. The interesting thing about Fishing World, however, is their business model. In the fishing industry most of the companies that produce fishing rods, lures, fishing line, etc., are all very small companies rather than enourmous entitites. Fishing World takes advantage of that by creating vendor pages and charging vendors by the number of items they sell. The result of this fantastic idea is that Fishing World has created a way to keep people within its own network.
Will “Queer Eye” and other new models change the way we look at marketing? Only time will tell but until then, discuss your own predictions at WebProWorld, your forum for e-Business news and information
Brittany Thompson is an administrator for WebProWorld.com and contributes to the Insider Reports with her regular articles and interviews.
