Latest Thinking from IEG

New Ticketmaster Book a Scintillating Read for Sponsorship Buyers and Sellers
Just finished a must-read for anyone in sports, event or entertainment marketing: Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped by Dean Budnick and Josh Baron.

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Filed under: events, music, venues, entertainment

Noteworthy Takeaways from the Sports Entertainment Summit

I attended the Sports Entertainment Summit produced by Variety and trade association Sports Video Group last week in Los Angeles and came away with the following nuggets:

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Filed under: entertainment, pro sports, social media, sports, endorsements

Orange You Glad It’s Glastonbury Sponsorship Time? (And A Personal Note)

My colleague Julie Kimball passed around the latest in a long line of cool Orange ideas that get us geeking out not only over the smart technology but also the smart use of sponsorship.

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Filed under: entertainment, fashion, festivals, green, telecommunications, activation

Know Thyself: Discovering your Brand Personality

Building off of my colleague Diane’s latest blog, I recently watched Morgan Spurlock’s newest documentary, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. One of the major themes of the film is the importance of discovering your brand personality for the purpose of partnering with ‘like’ brands. In the movie, Spurlock visits a noted branding agency where they identify his primary brand attributes as a juxtaposition of being both playful and mindful. From there, the brand agency listed several companies that had a similar brand identity, such as Apple and JetBlue, as potential partners for Spurlock’s documentary.

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Filed under: branded content, branded entertainment, endorsements, entertainment, pro sports, activation

Soulful Selling: Morgan Spurlock and A Day at the Zoo

I spent Friday morning in Philly in meetings with an IEG Consulting client, the Philadelphia Zoo. Though I was really there to talk sponsorship, I admit the day’s highlights included excitedly waving at a black leopard and cooing to an adorable baby giraffe. Life is good.

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Filed under: branded content, branded entertainment, entertainment, how to get sponsorship, museums/zoos/aquariums, backlash

The People Magazine Reading Room. Really?

I’m a sucker for makeover shows. Whether it’s a person, a home, or the latest edition of schools, if I see one on TV, nine times out of ten I’m going to watch it.

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Filed under: branded entertainment, entertainment, product placement, backlash

Microsoft Tells It Like It Is... But Will Others Like It?

“Really?!” No, “REALLY?!” How many times have I heard this in the past year and a half as it relates to the way my little smart phone is permanently glued to my hand? Let’s see… just about every family function I attend, a few times out with my girlfriends, on a handful of dates, hell, even running the Cleveland Half Marathon. I’m the person the new Microsoft Windows Phone 7 ad pokes fun at. And I love it. If you haven’t seen it, take the minute to check it out. It’s well worth it.

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Filed under: digital media, entertainment, new media, backlash

Brita’s FilterForGood Partners with Jack Johnson
In April, I wrote a blog post about Jack Johnson’s “To The Sea Tour” and I gushed about the fact that 100 percent of the proceeds from that Tour would be given to 150 nonprofit community groups.

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Filed under: music, nonprofit, entertainment

Sponsorship of Cinema Entertainment Experiences

What do the Metropolitan Opera, Metallica and UFC have in common? Fans and movie theater audiences have the opportunity to see these events/productions in HD at hundreds of movie theaters throughout the nation.

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Filed under: events, entertainment

Authenticity in Sponsorship: Does Keeping it Real Need A Reality Check?

This past Saturday night, my husband bet me 15 bucks to ask Anthony Bourdain whether his Chase Sapphire product integration deal cost him his soul.

He needn't have made that bet. Tony launched into it within the first five minutes of his storytime/stand-up/Q+A concert Saturday night at The Chicago Theatre. (For those who don’t know his work, Anthony Bourdain is the chef/author/badboy foodie/world traveler who has a great show on Travel Channel called No Reservations emphasizes finding the authentic experience of a place.)

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Filed under: branded content, cause marketing, digital media, entertainment, new media, non-traditional categories, product placement, backlash