The Wall Street Journal is running a piece on BrightLine, a 15-person Manhattan firm that takes ideas for traditional ads and figures out how those concepts can function in venues such as video on demand and digital video recorders.
Tweaking traditional ad ideas for on-demand services is a niche specialty, falling somewhere between traditional media planning and marketing services — but one that is increasingly in demand. Because traditional ad firms are more accustomed to developing ads for TV and print, the rapid growth of new commercial formats is creating an opportunity for firms like BrightLine to help marketers figure things out.
For example, BrightLine worked with another small ad firm, The Viral Factory, on a video-on-demand promotion for Unilever’s Axe body spray in late 2005. The Viral Factory created a four-minute humorous video featuring a mock news broadcast about a fictional town called Ravenstoke, where men were doused with Axe body spray to help attract more women to the town. BrightLine decided the clip would work as part of the VOD programming offered by Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, and arranged for insertion of the video in the on-demand menu.
