Marketers can drink it up at the Tiki Bar and the new short form genre
Time 20:22
Tiki Bar TV is one of the most popular vidcasts. This wonderful comedy short-form with colorful characters and a winning drink recipe at the end of every show is an excellent example of great work in this new genre — one in which marketers can access a community of fans. The show, available wherever podcasts are distributed, also has a delightful Web site with excellent tie-ins to merchandise, drink recipes and plenty social media uses, including MySpace badges, a forum and live chat elements.
Tosca Musk of Musk Entertainment is the producer of Tiki Bar TV. Tosca says as a business, this form of art, vidcasting, is still finding its way. Tiki Bar is creative from the business side as well by having excellent main characters and adding other interchangeable characters to keep the show fresh.
As a marketer I look at the show and Web site as a package, with plenty of places to support the art form (as a sponsor/underwriter), contribute valued information (drink recipes, good combos and bad, Tiki Bar food recipes), co-branded merchandise…well, you get it: There’s plenty for a creative mind to play with.
We didn’t discuss this in the podcast, but could there be product character appearances, such as a cameo from Captain Morgan? We do touch on how this kind of package will allow innovative advertisers and businesses to create information (I purposefully did not use the word advertising) that is less disruptive and more constructive.
In the podcast we chat with Jeff Macpherson, the director of Tiki Bar. He believes this genre is also outstanding for actors to create unprecedented relationships with their audience members. Because of the Web platform, these characters seem so much more approachable, and as Jeff says, “We are more approachable!” They even invited me over for a drink.
And yes, as a special treat we even get a couple of questions in with the good Dr. Tiki himself. So sit back, get a drink and enjoy this episode of the Marketing Edge.
Tiki Bar does have a Wikipedia entry.
Lead characters:
–Jeff Macpherson as Dr. Tiki
–Kevin Gamble as Johnny Johnny
–Lara Doucette as Lala
If you are one of the first three people to e-mail me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net, I’ll get you a Charooba Tiki Bar Mug.
Tags: vidcasting
This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 10:02 am and is filed under community marketing, entertainment, new media, podcasting.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 22nd, 2008 at 12:37 am
I was mentioning to Albert via email that always mentioing “Smirnoff Vodka” instead of just “Vodka” was an idea, however that doesn’t really draw in the viewer the way a new character would.
A little snag to watch out for: you can’t have a character as just a logo, there has to be a reason he’s there other than as an ad.
March 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 am
OOOhhh boy we got some good mo jo goin’ on the social media blog this month. Here here now my good Phoenix friend, I am sure in the creative tradition of the Tiki Bar if there was an opportunity for the Good Captain Morgan to visit the Tiki Bar he would have a logical reason, perhaps tracking down Mr. Ambassador, or delivering some found plunder that was taken from Johnny Johnny’s great, great, great, great Grandfather, or a secret pirate concoction known to only those on the high seas.
Now that I think of it, I’m not sure if the Captain is truly a pirate (a former sailor that was out of work in the 1600s and went around stealing stuff) or a Privateer, (a former sailor who was out of work but was given authority by a government to steal stuff from ships from an enemy government)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer
I could not find the history of the Captain Morgan on their website, http://www.captainmorgan.com/en-us/home.html
And speaking of pirates, the BBC World Service had a wonderful documentary about them http://tinyurl.com/yt6htt
Thanks for the comment Tankilo on twitter.
March 24th, 2008 at 11:16 am
One of the reasons why you don’t see specific endorsements for “Captain Morgan” or “Smirnoff,” is that the liquor companies follow a sort of code in their advertising, where they won’t associate with any sort of drunkenness. Rather, they just show you how their products make you a smooth operator, and popular at a parties -lol.
Jeff has mentioned before that despite all the speculation about sponsorship from booze companies…no one has stepped up, because the characters (and/or the actors) are a bit sloppy due to their alcohol consumption.