No, You’re Not Henry the IX

We were surprised, when flushing our e-mail box of the offers for counterfeit watches and sex aids, to find a clip of a news video informing a correspondent that she might be the holder of the deed to the land under Buckingham Palace.

Especially when the correspondent’s picture and name showed up, pretty organically, in the news story.

Guess what — it was a fake! It’s the latest viral marketing crafted by Showtime to promote the second season of The Tudors.

Robert Hayes, senior vice president and general manager of Showtime digital media, said the premium channel had “seeded” the e-mail in blogs written by the top 200 entertainment bloggers. It looked like a friend had sent a link to the news story, in which the reporter described the findings of a researcher, who’d discovered documentation to suggest that a distant heir of Henry VIII (i.e. the receiver of the link) had an inheritance coming.

“Our strategy in the digital space is to get in front of people in their space,” Hayes said. Bloggers were able to embed a Showtime video player on their sites, so fans could view clips without leaving the original site, along with obtaining other tools. The tools have codes embedded, so the channel can track how many have been taken, and when they are shared.

Showtime thinks the marketing — and the network’s syndicating full-length preview episodes to 60 partners — have boosted traffic to its online ordering site. It’s quadrupled in March versus February (when Showtime didn’t have new shows debuting), to a record level, the network says to executives.

Good show!

One Man’s Discarded Art …

Some might have chuckled last December when Rainbow Media CEO Joshua Sapan donated part of his “discarded art” collection to be auctioned online, proceeds going to Cable Positive’s efforts against HIV and AIDS. (For more on the collection, see Discardedart.com.)

But Cable Positive was thrilled, and the auction, which kicked off on World AIDS Day (Dec. 1) in partnership with Jeffrey Bernstein’s Chelsea Marketeers’ eBay selling firm, raised nearly $2,000 from the sale of 42 pieces.

Including other donated items, the auction raised more than $3,000, according to the organization.

Now, Sapan has gone further, donating artwork to the New York AIDS Service Center and to centers aligned with other Cable Positive chapters.

“There is interest elsewhere so down the road it will definitely go further than New York,” organization spokesman Max Johnson said.

The art auction is over but online sales go on, currently including four VIP passes to Comedy Central’s The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, via Cablepositive.org.

There’s the Rub: Find 'Pure’ BBQ

Now, along with stressing over the right offers and compelling verbiage for an affiliate relations campaign solicitation, marketers have another issue to worry about: if foodstuffs are included, will it doom the campaign if the edibles come from, say, China?

With daily news stories about contamination, some marketers are on the lookout for food premium items that won’t taint the pitch with a Chinese connection.

Provenance was an issue for Denise Conroy-Galley of the Outdoor Channel. Its new campaign pitch (see Customers, page 28) has a spring fever theme and includes three containers of barbecue rubs for early season grilling. She also worried someone might get sick (at worst) or throw the kit away (also bad), so she had to look all over to find products that could be labeled with Outdoor’s identity that didn’t come from China.

She finally found rubs from good ’ol USA. Memphis, to be precise.