Monday, April 30, 2007

Idol Give Back - Some lessons for all of us

I've always been fascinated by American Idol's marketing genius. At the core is a great family values TV show. The whole family can watch - it cuts across the races, the sexes, and music genres. Around this strong core is the integrated marketing and extension of the product. (very Disney-esqe) - the magazine, the singles, the PR, the web site, the advertisers, and the concerts. But layering on the "Idol Gives Back" theme made their concentric circles fan out even further. They had MySpace in the mix, Disney/ABC, new sponsors, itunes downloads, and it went on and on. The team was fast and furious putting all of it together.

While I agree with Marc Sirkin that the tide may raise all boats - in fact, we had our WalkAmerica weekend right after the broadcast, I do question the charity approach that they took. So they raised all this money on behalf of an entertainment foundation, who is dividing it up between many charities. They are all worthwhile organizations, but it's interesting how they state that your money "could" go to one thing or another but it's actually not specifically designated. And where does one.org fit into the whole thing? Isn't the American public confused by the various URLs? And wasn't Bono pushing Red not White?

We can all learn from the integrated approach - and hopefully more media companies will want to look like heroes. But I'm not sure whether the American public knows exactly where they gave their money - would be fascinating to do a follow up survey....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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