Archive for August 7th, 2008
Though suing file-sharing sites has no effect on the proliferation of file sharing, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America)- and its lawers- sure feel better about themselves for doing it. However, there is a section of the film world that isn’t yet positioned to take organized legal action.
That’s right, the porn industry. Made up of a few well-established companies and who knows how many independent producers (and “producers”), porn production cannot really act collectively. However, one man is trying to change that.
Jason Tucker has formed the PAK Group, complete with a catchy mission statement (“committed to taking actino against thieves”) and logo. Unless you read the client list, you wouldn’t realize that the group focuses on protecting adult content.
The PAK Group was founded in September 2007 by a coalition of producers angry with the spread of piracy online. It originally set out to attack individual file-sharers online, much like the RIAA.
Tucker’s new target refers largely to the deluge of “tube” websites that have sprung up in the past few years: styled after the ever-so-popular YouTube, there are now hundreds of these sites offering free streaming video complete with search engines, indexed content, tagging, and in some cases even a download option. Much of their content, however, is pirated.
Source: dailytech.com
BEIJING (Reuters) – Olympic sponsors are launching possibly the largest advertising and marketing campaign ever, aiming to etch their brands in the minds of a new generation of Chinese consumers for far beyond the upcoming Games.
The ads range from traditional print and TV to glitzy new on-line media, blanketing a vast country whose citizens place an extraordinarily high value on the Olympic ideal and presumably the companies that support it.
While the risk of a public relations backlash still looms as China finds itself at odds with much of the world on hot-button issues such as Tibet and Sudan, the hoped-for gains far outweigh any possible downside.
“On a global scale, I don’t think you are going to get this kind of investment again,” said Greg Paull, the head of R3, a Beijing-based media consultancy.
R3 — which counts sponsors Coca-Cola Co, Adidas, Yili and Lenovo Group as clients — says the benefits for companies will be enjoyed for years after the last athlete crosses the final finish line next month.
R3 reckons all advertisers in China will spend 19 percent more in 2008 than a year earlier to about $54.3 billion, for an “Olympic effect” of about $8.6 billion in additional spending.
In addition, Olympic sponsors alone will spend 21.8 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) this year, rising 52 percent from 2007, said Paull.
German sportswear maker Adidas, one of 11 national partners of the Beijing Games, is expecting its Olympic tieup to vault it past arch rival Nike Inc in the China market this year.
“Our marketing campaign for China is the largest we have ever done in a single country,” Erica Kerner, director of the Beijing Olympic program for Adidas, told Reuters.
“We see this as a marketing platform that will help us to achieve market leadership in China this year,” she said.
Adidas will use a 360-degree projection theatre to spread its “Together in 2008, Impossible is Nothing” slogan.
ECONOMICS TRUMPS POLITICS
Nike — which sponsors individual athletes and sports groups, but not the Olympics itself — is perhaps underestimating the fact that over 90 percent of Chinese view the Olympics, and companies associated with it, in a positive light.
China is the world’s fastest growing major economy and is seen by multinationals as a crucial market, success in which would give the winners a step up in the global battle for precious market share.
Adidas estimates China will become its second largest market after the United States by 2010, when its stores will grow to 6,300 from over 4,000 now, riding a sports and leisure boom.
But nothing in China comes easy, as Olympic backers found out earlier this year and again last month.
Organizers and sponsors of the Games were rattled when China’s harsh crackdown in Tibet touched off global anti-Chinese protests leading to talk of an Olympic boycott.
“That is a big challenge for all sponsors,” said Paull, the media consultant, referring to the political risks surrounding the Olympics.
“But it is also par for the course, part of doing business in this market,” said Paull.
Tibet is far from the only issue that could tarnish the Games for sponsors and China.
Beijing criticized the International Criminal Court last month after the court charged the president of key ally Sudan with genocide, adding to claims Beijing was only interested in protecting its oil investments in the poor African country.
Some Olympic athletes who have joined Team Darfur, an informal, 300-strong group created by former U.S. speed skater Joey Cheek to draw attention to Sudan, have said they may stage some form of protest while in Beijing.
The possibility foreign-based protestors or home-grown terrorists from Tibet or the restive region of Xinjiang could mar the Games, has prompted extraordinary security measures including emptying Beijing of migrant workers and tighter visa rules.
BIG BUSINESS
But the political backdrop is having little impact on advertisers who are taking advantage of the positive vibes to the pre-Olympic buildup in the capital. And cost is no object.
Coca-Cola is inviting 10,000 people to Beijing for the Games and will dazzle them with what is touted as the world’s largest overhead LCD screen, covering an entire outdoor plaza.
Half of Coke’s guest list are clients and employees from overseas, and another large contingent will be staff volunteers from China to help with its many hospitality events spread throughout Beijing.
“Our people are really excited to be here. It is a win-win,” said Christina Lau, Coke’s director of external affairs based in Beijing.
“We have selected employees who have demonstrated their passion and commitment to Coke and the Olympics,” she said.
In this May 22, 2008 photo, singer Madonna arrives for the 2008 amfAR Cinema Against AIDS benefit in Mougins, southern France. Madonna will introduce her documentary “I Am Because We Are” before its screening Saturday night at the Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Mich., founded by her pal Michael Moore. The movie deals with the orphans of Malawi, the African nation where she and husband Guy Ritchie adopted a son. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — She might be known worldwide as the Material Girl, but there’s more than a little of the small-town Michigan girl left in Madonna.
The pop superstar arrived in this northern Michigan resort town Saturday to introduce her documentary, “I Am Because We Are,” a highlight of the Traverse City Film Festival. The event was co-founded by filmmaker, author and fellow Michigan native Michael Moore.
Hundreds of fans cheered from behind barricades as Madonna, wearing a black dress, high heels and sunglasses, stepped out of a black sport utility vehicle that pulled up in front of the State Theatre. She hugged a waiting Moore, who sported an orange baseball cap, and posed for photos with him.
Madonna and Moore shared the stage at the theater before a screening of the movie, which deals with the orphans of Malawi, the African nation where she and husband Guy Ritchie adopted a son.
“It’s great bringing my movie to a place that I feel familiar,” Madonna told the audience. “Not like the Cannes Film Festival, where nobody’s speaking English, or the Tribeca Film Festival, where no one sits down.
“There’s something poetic about coming back to the place where I used to come for holidays — camping trips with my dad and stepmother and my very large family,” said the 49-year-old singer, born to the southeast in Bay City and raised in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills.
Madonna was accompanied by her 11-year-old daughter, Lourdes, and the film’s director, Nathan Rissman. Ritchie was not present.
Moore, who won an Oscar for his 2002 documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” said he was humbled to be able to call Madonna a friend.
“She has such an incredible heart and such a generous spirit,” he said. “She does so much out of the glare of the lights to make the world a better place.”
Madonna had praise of her own for Moore, 54, a Flint-area native who has a home near Traverse City.
“There aren’t a lot of role models for us in the world, or people we can look up to,” she said. “People who are not afraid to stick their neck out, people who are not afraid to stand up for things and be unpopular, to go against the grain, think outside the box.
“And we need, and I need, Michael Moore in my life.”
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