In 2005, Aestheticom and EMI collaborated to create a 30-second TV spot promoting singer David Bowie's CD catalog a la VH1 Classics. However, the project required integrating TV and the Internet to generate response.

By David Lustig

The entertainment business is full of misperceptions; the parties are grand, the living is easy and the money is never-ending. Just watch any awards show and you'll see for yourself. How wrong is that? Just ask any of the legions of unseen, hard working behind-the-scenes people holding down jobs anywhere from corporate management to third-shift art directors. Just like any other business in today's overheated, fast-paced, need-it-yesterday business world, there is little glitz and lots of hard work.

THE START OF THE JOURNEY
In mid-2004, EMI, the world's largest music publisher in terms of copyrights owned, controlled or administered, with rights to more than 1 million musical compositions and offices in 30 countries, wanted to push its catalog of David Bowie music.

Enter Jason Upright, at that time the coordinator of product development for EMI's Catalog Marketing Division located in Hollywood, Calif., who had been tasked to shepherd the project through to completion.

"One of our biggest artists in the EMI catalog was, and still is, David Bowie," explains Upright, now employed by another company.

"We had a huge David Bowie campaign coming up involving a series of album reissues centered around his new album coming out from Columbia," he says. "In catalog, we look for something hot happening with one of our artists and try and put out a record, while their name is in the news."

The 30-second TV spot aired on VH1, which promoted the "Bowie Live in Your Living Room Sweepstakes." It turned out to be the most successful contest that VH1 had ever run.

Upright and his team contacted VH1 Classics' marketing department and discovered they were open to partnering with EMI on a contest. Upright discussed a "David Bowie Weekend," a marathon of his best videos. Besides the contest, the two entities agreed on TV spots to promote the contest. To round out the team, they agreed to bring in Sound and Vision magazine, which caters to audiophiles. It would be the magazine's job to round up the prizes for the contest. Not any run-of-the-mill prizes, but items like top of the line plasma HDTVs and Surround Sound theater systems. And to tie it all together, Upright's team sweetened the pot with Bowie's entire CD catalog. The end product would be called the "Bowie Live in Your Living Room Sweepstakes."

NEW MEDIA COMPANY ENTERS THE SCENE
Enter New York City-based Aestheticom. This new media company and traditional production company focuses on digital video, web site video, on-demand interactive e-mails and other digital products, with applications for the music industry and other Internet-related industries. Aestheticom's founder and CEO, Bill Schacht, coincidentally happened to be exploring possible business opportunities with EMI at the time.

Aestheticom brought a lot to the table with an impressive client list that included Alice Cooper, the Bee Gees, Disney, DreamWorks Records, the Eurythmics, Jeff Foxworthy, Hip-O Records, Lynard Skynard, Marvel Comics, Microsoft, Motley Crue, Shania Twain, Snoop Dog, Sony, Thomas Dolby, Time-Life, Universal Records, Universal Sweden and The Who.

"We needed to come up with some 30-second television spots," says Upright. "At that time, Aestheticom was sending EMI demo reels showing what they could do. We hadn't worked with them before and I thought this was a good chance to try them out."

Financial arrangements were worked out to everyone's satisfaction.

"They wanted to work with us," explains Upright, "and we wanted to try them. I said okay, show me what you got." says Upright explaining the concept, the prizes and what EMI was hoping to achieve.

TAKING THE FIRST STEP
"Trying them out," meant EMI expected Aestheticom to go from an electronic handshake to finished product in five weeks. EMI interpreted VH1 Classics' primary market as viewers in their mid-30s to mid-40s, mostly skewed female and average to above average income. Length of the contest was slated to be about a month.

"We never met," says Upright. "It was all on the telephone. Us in Hollywood, them in New York and lots of e-mails and phone calls."

Aestheticom's Schacht says it was his company's job to incorporate the top tier contest partners into one cohesive offer from VH1, while simultaneously maintaining the "marquis level" image David Bowie has been known for over the past three decades. The trick, he says, was to boil all that into a single 30-second spot.

"The Internet has made a great impact on how we do business," says Schacht. "Since we did not have compelling footage for any of these disparate elements, we created a 3D environment based on the contest theme, or the living room. In this 3D living room, all elements, including the Sharp Aquos HDTV, Denon receiver, Definitive Technology speakers, Sound and Vision magazine, and Davie Bowie CDs were better controlled and represented.

"Perhaps more challenging than that was how to make the David Bowie footage more exciting. The solution was to extract only the most compelling parts of the footage, which was lightly treated and then placed in this 3D environment on the Sharp HDTV."

A SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATION
Upright's decision to go with untried-to-EMI Aestheticom paid off.

"In an e-mail a few days later, they sent me a rough idea of what they had in an MPEG," notes Upright. "I watched it on my computer. I liked some parts, [but] didn't [like] others. As we'd go along we'd get MP3s of voiceovers. They gave us a number of choices. We ended up going with the very first one they had; a 30-second spot of entirely generated spot graphics. Every product got equal screen time."

The commercial succeeded beyond EMI and VH1's wildest dreams.

"We got a great response," says Upright. "VH1 came back to us and we were both enthusiastic. It turned out to be the most successful contest that VH1 Classics had ever run. We were hoping to get a few thousand replies, but we got something in the range of 20,000."

Schacht agrees. "According to EMI, the spot aired with great success and subsequently, the contest has pulled more entries than any other for VH1 Classics," Schacht says.

As a result of its success, Schacht says EMI awarded Aestheticom other DR campaigns, including the production of EMI North American corporate presentations as well as DRTV campaigns for Pat Benatar and Megadeth.

BUILDING ON SUCCESS
Schacht says it is not unusual to complete successful campaigns around the world with clients he has never met.

"We're fortunate that after six years in business, our reputation does a good deal of speaking for us," he says. "We have many clients that we've never met; in fact, some countries we've never been in, as our spots now run all over the globe.

"For example, we recently completed a project for Warner Bros. International in London for Europe, Australia and South American with a fellow we've only spoken with.

"He described the project, we agreed to work together and ideas were e-mailed. He replied and uploaded some files to our FTP, we e-mailed a comp, he e-mailed comments, we tweaked, obtained approval and delivered the master via FTP. The project was managed from our office in Stockholm, Sweden, while production was done from our U.S. office in New York.

"There was just one London-Stockholm-New York conference call to introduce everyone, more of a courtesy than anything else. Aside from that, everything took place over the web until the product hit the TV stations for broadcast. That product has now served more than 750,000 pieces."

IT LOOKS EASY, BUT IT'S NOT
Schacht says sometimes the creative process can be tougher, not easier to make work, especially if the client may not know exactly what he or she wants and at the same time, not have access to the largest budget in the world.

"Our very first objective with a client is to provide a solution for them, which matches their goals and expectations, while we begin cooking our internal plan of 'exceeding their expectations,'" he explains.

Exceeding their expectations sounds like a cliché, says Schacht, but he affirms it is truly Aestheticom's business motto and business ethic.

"This solution means a production which, above all, works. In other words," he says, "helps exceed the financial goals."

Schacht also says he is always frank with his clients, and what they spend on a production really does impact what they can achieve.

Besides money, time is also a factor. EMI's David Bowie project was an example of that. Upright had told him that time was short. So with that in mind, what did the first concept e-mail to the client look like?

"As to be expected, it was pretty rough around the edges," says Schacht. "Since it was our first draft, the sole intent was to communicate our idea, which it did, so much so [that] it got us the green light."

But getting the green light, or go-ahead, was not by accident.

"We always research our projects thoroughly," he says. "What is the key element that will get our target demo to buy? We immediately began building off our initial concept to EMI until we developed a solution above and beyond what we already agreed with the client would work."

Perhaps the best comment Aestheticom could receive from its collaboration with EMI was one simple declarative sentence from Upright after completion of the project: "I am really happy with Bill and his company."  

If you would like to view the David Bowie/VH1/EMI 30-second spot, please visit the Aestheticom web site at www.aestheti.com.

David Lustig is a contributing writer to Electronic Retailer magazine. We would appreciate your feedback. To submit comments, point browser to bowiedec.marketing-era.com.