[ 15. The HSBC Website | Marketing ]

[ The HSBC Website www.hsbc.com ]

Bluetooth is a wireless short range communications technology intended to replace the wires connecting portable and fixed devices, while still maintaining high levels of security. Because Bluetooth is a very widely accepted technology, almost every Bluetooth enabled device can instantly connect to another Bluetooth enabled device within range, anywhere in the world. These ad hoc networks can also be called piconets and use short range radio frequency signals to interact and communicate and Bluetooth communication has a very small power usage, around 2.5mW, and this allows even the smallest devices to be connected, although Bluetooth powers can vary, increasing and decreasing the range as well. Some industrial piconets can range to more than 300metres. One of the most common uses of Bluetooth technology is in mobile phones.

[ In Detail ]
HSBC has trialled a new form of marketing. The large branches at Canary Wharf and on Regent Street spam passers-by with Bluetooth adverts directly to their phones. The practice, often known as 'proximity marketing' [ proximity marketing ] uses a server to detect Bluetooth capable mobile phones in the area. HSBC uses the server to send phones with the facility activated a message asking users to accept a download. If the user accepts, a marketing message is displayed. The branch remembers the phone’s information in an effort not to target the same phone more than is necessary. This is a step forward in technology and a good example of putting the newest technology into a practical application, although if this technique of proximity advertising becomes too proliferant, then users could find themselves walking down any high street with dozens of messages literally spamming their phone with unwanted adverts. HSBC is also up against security concerns about the safety of Bluetooth, where “driveby hackers” can exploit flaws in the signal to steal personal information and make free calls. In addition, users could in the future also be hoarded by the branch and contacted even when not in range of the branch. There is, however a simple solution. Turn off the Bluetooth function on your phone. Another application of Bluetooth in advertising is the possibility of a Bluetooth Billboard, where anyone interested in the contents of the poster advert can hold their phones close to the billboard and choose to receive more information, rather than have it forced down their throats. Even the slight possibility of having competitions or newsletter sign-ups available by simply sending a message to a node in a shop or a billboard is possible for the future. Having the audience choose whether to initiate information would be better accepted than having them bombarded with unsolicited and the majority unwanted adverts.

This is a good example of a non-linear advertising opportunity, immediacy, portability, miniaturisation, proliferation, convenience, democratisation, vertical integration, reach, surveillance and convergence. It is true exploitation of new media technology.

[ 13. The LimeWire Website | Software ]

[ The LimeWire Website www.limewire.com ]

LimeWire is a free Peer-to-Peer filesharing software for the Java Platform, which runs on the Gnutella Network, linking users and enables them to share files between one another. The software has a very wide reach, increasing the size of its already global network and thus, the more people who download it, the more files are available, which means that more people download it. The audience is not a specialised demographic, but LimeWire’s main audience is tended to the younger generation as these are both the audience who would like to use it most and actually know how to. LimeWire replaces mail and attatchments, and physical interactions between people, of USB-pens or CDs, etc.

[ In Detail ]
LimeWire fundamentally allows the consumers to share whatever file they like directly over the internet, the only catch is that they cannot specify who they send it to, thus if one person can see and download it, so can everyone on the network, which hosts hundreds of thousands of people at any one time. The proliferation of high-speed broadband has aided LimeWire, allowing faster downloads and the progression in programming techniques and programs allows for a better software package.
LimeWire has come under some criticism for its clear breaches of copyright, as it is primarily used by the great majority of users to exchange music for free. LimeWire has considered closing down the network and ceasing downloads of the software in light of the MGM [ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ] decision against Grokster in the US supreme court stating that P2P companies Grokster and Streamcast could be sued for inducing copyright infringement for acts taken in the course of marketing file sharing software. This has been called the most important intellectual property case in decades.
LimeWire is a very good example of reach, audience distribution and horizontal integration.

[ 12. The iPod Website | Apple ]

[ The iPod Website www.apple.com/itunes ]

iPod is a brand of very popular portable media players launched by Apple in 2001. iPods are primarily digital audio players but have evolved to encompass many other different and useful everyday functions. iPods have essentially replaced Sony Walkmans and other portable CD/cassette players.

[ In Detail ]
The iPods are aimed at the younger generation since that demographic is more likely to have a large digital music collection and is more active and mobile. The introduction of the iPod in 2001 had paved the way for portable digital media players and by the 9th April 2007, Apple announced that 1 million units had been sold worldwide. Apple is utilising the ever decreasing size of motherboards, hard drives, LCD screens, batteries and associated wiring that make up the insides of an iPod, and this allows them to make increasingly smaller units, letting the audience pick the size that fits their lifestyle best and as we know, smaller is better. iPods allow consumers to listen to music via the MP3, WAV, AAC, Apple Lossless and Audible 2,3 and 4 formats. H.264, MPEG-4 and MOV files are also supported for video, to watch TV shows, DVDs and home videos encoded with Quicktime Pro [ Quicktime ]. One can view photos in the formats JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG and PSD. One can create calendar dates, contacts sync, carry any other type of file on their iPod like an external hard drive, play games and integrate their player to their car stereo. This massive miniaturisation and portability is a great example of convergence and vertical integration, with a huge reach, it is flexible and allows the consumer to personalise their unit.

[ 11. The Scrubs Fansite| Homepage ]

[ The Scrubs Fansite www.scrubs.mopnt.com ]

Scrubs is an American sitcom set in teaching hospital Sacred Heart Hospital, created by Bill Laurence and starring Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke and John McGinley. Each episode is around 23 minutes long, plus advert breaks making a half-hour show. Scrubs is shot with a single camera setup and is strange in terms of the fact that it doesn’t use a laughter track, although in a few episodes the directors have themed the premise of the episode, and sometimes changing the setup of the show, eg. one episode was featured in the style of a traditional sitcom in front of a live audience, and other few were in the style of musicals, featuring multiple camera setups.

[ In Detail ]
The fan website for Scrubs is narrowcasted to the fans of the show and is basically a huge database of the series’ large collection of both music tracks and scripts, of which there are over 130. There are other things on the website, like related links, news, FAQ’s [ FAQ ], trivia, merchandise, Scrubs character personality quizzes, hyperlinks to Scrubs in the media and Scrubs in general. The site is comprehensive with lots of facts, information and generally anything to do with the show itself. The audience is any fans of the show and essentially, anyone who wants to find something out about it. The website itself hosts a number of features, although off-site are many more features, including message boarding. These sites are only made available with the ever increasing internet speeds and home-editing software. This has allowed the fans to show their appreciation to the Scrubs crew and help keep the show running. The wide availability of this website and other alike is the quality of the experience that it brings to the series, as the audience feel that they can get closer and find out more about the series, which also increases their loyalty to the show, as well as knowing that there are other dedicated fans out there, increasing vertical integration.
The Scrubs fansite is a good demonstration of democratisation, reach and a non-linear consumption experience.

[ 9. The lonelygirl15 Series | YouTube ]

[ The lonelygirl15 Series www.youtube.com/user/lonelygirl15 ]

Another internet phenomenon, lonelygirl15 (the preferred spelling is without any capital letters) is a relatively long-running and very popular Videoblog. The series began back in June 2006, where a 16 year old girl named Bree and her best friend, though not boyfriend Daniel under the anonym DanielBeast regularly posted Vblogs of their life onto YouTube.

[ In Detail ]
Bree first hooked viewers with humorous and engaging videos featuring popular YouTube directors and videos. Under the suspicious alias lonelygirl15, she achieved massive success on YouTube, with 91321 subscribers to her channel, who arduously followed her everyday life through the eyes of a webcam in her room. The widespread availability of good quality digital cameras and webcams and good editing software would have made her series possible and the cheap cost of fast broadband made it possible to both upload and download her movies. Many fans commented on her videos, which she sometimes replied to in the next in her series of blogs, showing that her blogs were not prerecorded, but were genuinely filmed around that time. However, the videos seemed far too regular and well edited to be real, many critics proclaimed, although many many of her closest fans believed that she was indeed a real person. She had her own pet likes and dislikes, and the story became too dramatic to be realistic, and was eventually found out to be an actress named Jessica Rose, with the suspicions about her username being simply a lure to pique the internet community’s interests… even a fan website and a whole section on wikipedia were created for her.
Many fans and viewers made the connection between this and the viral marketing campaign [ viral marketing ] launched by the Blair Witch Project [ Blair Witch Project ] to advertise their movie, and thought it could be a taster for a new television series or an alternative reality game [ ARG ] or possible for some covert online surveillance.
Still as of yet, the monetary purpose of the series is not yet known, as no profit is made from the series, directed by Glenn Rubenstein.

Her series is groundbreaking. It is also a good example of how the internet combined with the huge reach of YouTube can be manipulated to gain massive media interest.

[ 8. The David Lehre Website | MySpace ]

[ The David Lehre MySpace www.myspace.com/davelehre ]

Dave Lehre has been a true internet phenomenon. A college dropout who still lives with his parents, he began his fledgling career with some highly entertaining and extremely popular videos, one of which is called “MySpace: The Movie” which parodied the social networking site, posted primarily onto his website and have made their way swiftly onto YouTube and various other similar sites. He and his self-founded production company Vendetta Studios now have a deal with Fox to produce his own untitled as of yet, late night half-hour show with a $300,000 budget for the pilot episode, self described as “an open-format sketch-variety show with music videos, short videos and comedy skits”. He has also made an appearance in recent parody “Epic Movie” as a look-alike for Ashton Kutcher. His main audience is anyone who is up for a good laugh and mostly, these tend to be the younger generation to late-20’s who are his main fans. He has built up quite a cult following, especially amongst the more technically minded audience, as his career was born from the internet.

[ In Detail ]
Straight from whence his career was born, he still utilises the internet to great extent, and especially both his own site and his MySpace page. They are used to raise awareness for his work and himself and also advertise subscriptions to his work, with plenty of direct hyperlinks [ hyperlink ] to iTunes, his Blog, his YouTube account and his own site. He embeds many of his videos and trailers on his page, and website, which makes it easier for new audience members to find his videos faster and more effortlessly.
Dave uses his blog to inform the fans of what he is doing and what he has scheduled in the coming weeks. He also posts up videos and pictures of things that may be interesting about him, such as his front-page appearance on MySpace or his TV appearances, or even his budding Vendetta Branded Clothing. Unfortunately, he isn’t able to post up the footage he has been filming, as the studio owns the rights, not himself, though he does try to post up as much as he can. This allows his fans to feel integrated and informed in what he is doing, increasing their loyalty and ‘fanship’. The fans can post their comments underneath the main post for him to read and he does read these and replies often. His blog contains an RSS feed to automatically inform his fans when he updates his blog.
His website and blog are good examples of a wide reach, good quality movies, democratisation and vertical integration.

[ 6. The 300 Site | Homepage ]

[ The 300 Website www.300themovie.com ]

The website for the film 300 is a very entertaining, interactive site, which essentially markets the film entirely, and replaces such other media texts such as posters, whilst playing host to extra information leading on from other media texts such as the television trailers and trailers hosted at other websites, such as in promotional sites like filmschoolrejects.com and ropeofsilicon.com and the Warner Bro’s site, who also have distributed the film, so technology such as streamed video is utilised to its fullest. These sites allow awareness to be raised and interest to be gained surrounding the film, which attracts audiences to the website, and ultimately to watch the film. The film is narrowcasted predominantly to males with few, but feisty female characters, blood and gore, etc., and the website reflects this, using dark colour schemes and frequent blood splatters and the theme of war and violence.
The film itself was created using almost all bluescreen technology and this adds a video-game style to the film. This extensive use of new media technology has added greatly to the film, adding both realism and fantasy, and reducing the liability for continuity errors. Adding to this exploitation of new media technologies, most of the website’s features contain NMT’s and thus increase the reach and quality of the film and its marketing.

[ In Detail ]
The website is very interesting and has many aspects and features. It is created with Adobe Flash and has interactive buttons and rollover buttons and many other new and exciting aspects. Such features within the website are film production notes and other related documents, trailers, TV trailers, wallpapers, MySpace details, merchandise, digital audio clips, concept art, free downloads and more. There are free screensavers for download and these use new media technologies both to download them fast enough, broadband, and to create them, Adobe Photoshop, and other similar products.
300: March to Glory, the game is yet another feature that is set in the website, it is designed for the PSP [ PSP ], a very good example of convergence, and it utilises the newest data-storage technology, namely UMD disks [ UMD ] and Memory Stick Pro: Duo [ Memory Stick Pro: Duo ]. This increases the accessibility of 300, and widens the franchise further than simply the film and action figures, etc. Another technology surrounding 300 that does this is the mobile game, the abundance of ringtones and wallpapers for personalisation. The mobile game and the PSP game are linked, with unlockables only available from the mobile game. This urges vertical integration between them and the film itself, and helps to sell both games and film tickets. This not only creates a portable, miniaturised non-linear experience, it also increases the quality of experience.
There is also a video production diary which allows the audience to feel closer to the production process and again exploits the easy ability to use embedded video, and also the production blog, in the same manner.
The website is covered in new media technology, from Adobe Flash technology, to blogging, to digital audio, to blue-screen and 3D modelling technology. This adds emphasis onto the movie, increases hype and anticipation and shows that this movie has a large budget and is a very important movie of the year.

[ 1. The Channel 4 Site | Homepage ]

[ The Channel 4 Website www.channel4.com ]

The Channel 4 site offers thorough programme information, information on an eclectic range of interests within Channel 4 and beyond, TV listings and scheduling information, news, a large entertainment section and various other audience related and interactive activities for a global audience which grants a massive reach for potential consumers of Channel 4’s products and services.

The website offers the massive audience of Channel 4 and all of its spin-off channels a chance to immerse themselves further into the channel as a whole, one specific program or their interests, guided by the extremely talented editors and according to the demographic group.

[ In Detail ]

The homepage has static panels along 3 sides of the page, with links ranging from the site content, to site maps and contact information. The panel on the left is the largest and the main navigator panel. This panel contains the main links: Watch Online, TV, Entertainment, Lifestyle, News, Documentaries and Interact. Under these, there are smaller categories within the links themselves, for quick navigation. This makes it more enticing for the audience and looking through the website doesn’t feel like such a chore.

The dominance of the homepage is entitled “Today on channel4.com” and features a slideshow of the main feature of the day such as FourDocs, Channel 4’s “broadband documentary service” which allows anyone to record and upload their own documentary on an open range of topics to be viewed and rated by other viewers from around the world which is a good example of democratisation. It is one part of the 4Talent initiative to get more young and prospective hopefuls into the extremely competitive industry. This feature, which is clearly highlighted from the homepage shows off to the audience about how innovative Channel 4 is and how highly it respects the views and products of the audience who show the same in return. The technologies involved in this and other areas of the website are very wide-ranging. Apart from the internet, being the overriding new technology in this instance, there are various peripheral technologies which combine to make the Channel 4 website as impressive as it is. One of these new technologies is RSS [ Really Simple Syndication RSS ]. RSS is a web feed format which publishes frequently updated websites and online content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts, such as the FourDocs blog or the Games page, which features a frequently updated page of console and free online games as voted for by both the public and nominated by the employees at the 4Games department within Channel 4. The rest of the homepage consists of various different tasters of the other categories of the site: News, Entertainment, etc. and also the main television feature of the night on any one of the numerous channels owned by Channel 4. Clicking on one of these links may bring you to a page report on the item, some background reading, games, quizzes and links spanning the website on issues related to the link followed.

Outside adverts from paying companies are also placed on the homepage, on the right. These are often internet or technology-related and are specifically targeted at the early-mid 20’s demographic.

The Channel 4 website is a good example of both democratisation and true connectivity and interdependency with the audience and shows a great deal of interactivity both on, and off-site.