A Fresh Look at Honeyshed

With the demise of FireBrand, the ill-fated attempt to get people to watch just the ads and nothing else, the big player left in the all-selling/all-the-time web video site is HoneyShed.  HoneyShed is kind of like the Home Shopping Network but aimed at a younger crowd.  Tilzy has been kind enough to do a pretty great review of the site. 

“When I first started watching digital shopping network HoneyShed, I was resistant: I told myself I was just going to review its originally-produced commercials; I wasn’t going to get sucked into buying the products they promoted. Hours later, I was taking twice as long to write this review due to hopeless distraction over items like the Magic Microphones in “HoneyShed’s Daily Hookup,” and I realized I had been unwittingly devoured by an advertising machine that is creating a new genre of branded entertainment.”

While I am not convinced that HoneyShed is a model for the long-term, the novelty in the short-term might be enough to keep them afloat for a bit.

Final Thought on Firebrand

I liked this little follow up from AdRants on the Firebrand flame-out.

“Fighting to the end, Firebrand CEO Roman Vinoly shared his frustration over doubters of the ads-as-content concept with AdWeek, pondering, “Isn’t it proven every Super Bowl and on lots of Web sites where people go? Isn’t it proven by being one of the largest categories uploaded to YouTube? Is it that difficult to conceive that great creative created by great artists with all the money in the world could be compelling to consumers even though it’s trying to sell a product?”…And those “great artists” Vinoly thinks would be so “compelling” to people are making ads mostly to pay the bills in between their primary artistic gigs. They’re not doing it with the goal of creating Oscar-worthy content people will flock to on a site such as Firebrand.”

That should pretty much wrap things up as far as this topic is concerned.

Firebrand = FAIL

File this one under D for “duh,” as the NBC/Microsoft/GE 100% commercials 100% of the time web and cable channel Firebrand is being put out of our misery.

Here are a few of the choice comments out there…

AdRants: “Following one of our many stories on the stupidity of the Firebrand business model and our prediction the end was near, Leventhal wrote us, “Your ‘prediction’ is wholly unsupported by your argument. Our model proves, once and for all, that marketing can be entertaining AND effective. And that viewers will gladly watch commercials. They just don’t like to be interrupted…and won’t watch bad commercials.”

ReelPop: “Moral of the story? I could give you the standard shpiel on consumer distaste for overt commercialization, except I don’t really believe it. The point really is that there is no sense building a single destination for great commercials to live online when they are already distributed virally on plenty of other sites.”

NewTeeVee:  “Can the infomercials-as-content site Honeyshed’s demise be far behind?”

And the NYT informs us just how much was blown on this pile of stupid: “Mr. Lack (ed. note: HA!)  said last September that the company would spend $30 million by the time the television version of Firebrand began on Ion. “