Giant Boobs, Pig-Faced Men and Shocking Violence – Now That’s a Book Promo

Publishers continue to make small forays into using short videos to promote their books.  This has taken every form from a simple talking head to an elaborate webseries.

According to AdRants, “Champagne-Fueled Jungle” a first novel by James Palumbo, is:

…about a society gone wrong. A society in which reality channel Shit TV (yes, that’s what it’s called) has overtaken the small screen and filled it with “homicidal dwarfs on rollerblades and obese mamas in tutus.” Title character, Tomas, has had enough and with the help of his tommy gun, he hopes to eradicate the world of this filth.

And if that doesn’t sound good enough for you, check out the lavishly animated promo video.  Beware, while entirely in black and white, the violence is quite graphic:

It’s great to see this level of attention and artistry dedicated to a book promotion.  Currently creeping near 4000 views, if just ten percent of viewers go get his book it would seem worthwhile.  Of course, that might be asking a lot from your average YouTube viewer.

Still, the combination of great animation and a violent, sexy story make this a video that could catch on and spread to some potential new readers Palumbo would never reach through traditional marketing.

Showtime Offers Kindle Readers Free Nurse Jackie Script

In an interesting, if rather small, attempt to build interest in their new Edie Falco series, “Nurse Jackie,” Showtime is offering free downloads of the a script of the first episode to all Kindle owners.

While this doesn’t make up a very large audience, I like the idea of promoting a show with the actual screenplay as opposed to clips or full episodes.  Sure, it won’t be for everyone but it is a cool insight into the process of how a show goes from script to screen.

Too bad Showtime seems to be limiting this to Kindle owners.  Don’t see why this campaign wouldn’t make sense if it was expanded to, say, all visitors to Amazon.com.

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AT&T’s Blue Room – Too Subtle?

I was taken by a post on Adverganza about a site run by AT&T called The Blue Room that features interviews with very big names in music like Madonna and Mariah Carey (ok, I said big, not cool). There is no way to know how many views the site is getting (that I know of) but I certainly haven’t been hearing anything about it…

The videos are syndicated to YouTube but as Adverganza points out:

“…it’s surprising how little play they get on YouTube. It’s not as though the interviews are that fabulous, but as one example, a Mariah Carey video put up a week ago has less than 400 views. I’m not sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear about her creative inspiration, but I was under the impression a few other people were.”

Here’s the question: Are people just not all that interested in yet another interview with these people or is it that AT&T has simple not done enough to promote their promotion.  Promoting a promotion raises all sorts of issues – like what the hell is the point of a promo if you need to advertize it…

OverLay Ads – Another Next New Thing

Came across posts on Mashable and NewTeeVee about OverLayTV.  As Mashable describes it:

“Overlay.TV enables you to place various text, graphics and animations over a video…but it also adds some interesting features in the mix. One of them is shopping; for example, you can mark an item on a video and create an online shop out of it; a viewer that clicks on it will be able to buy it directly from the video.”

There are definitely other companies at work on this but I really like the company’s Pirate spirit:

“By linking publishers, viewers of online video and marketers, Overlay.TV is transforming user-generated video content from a passive vehicle for entertainment or education, into an interactive vehicle for commerce,” said Rob Lane, President and CEO of Overlay.TV. “We’re empowering a whole new generation of publishers – a group we call ‘Generation P’ – with a user-friendly platform that will help them discover entirely new business models. The advertising industry has significantly shifted from traditional channels to web advertising. With the ubiquity of social networks, consumer-created advertising has more power and influence than anything produced by industry professionals.”

Oh, and they made a pretty darn entertaining promo video, too.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qATtnwdXzEQ&rel=1]