The agency formerly known as J. Walter Thompson is using TV commercials from its reel not to advertise its clients’ wares, but to make itself appear relevant in the new media sphere.
Here’s the New York Times take on the ploy:
JWT has purchased all the ad space on The Huffington Post home page for one week, starting tomorrow. The Web site will showcase nine of JWT’s best television commercials with links, so that visitors can send the spots via e-mail or instant message.
JWT is hoping that the year-old Huffington Post can deliver that elusive phenomenon: a viral marketing sensation, in which consumers spread marketing messages to each other over the Internet.
In a telephone interview from Paris, Bob Jeffrey, the chairman and chief executive of JWT Worldwide, said that JWT and The Huffington Post had picked commercials that they thought were “the most sticky, the ones that would get the most traction.”
While a typical one-month ad on The Huffington Post home page ranges from $120,000 to $145,000, the one-week deal has cost JWT a sum in the low six figures.
