CogBlog

In 1997 I co-founded COGBOX in with Michelle DeCol. Since then we've offered online marketing, web development and corporate and brand identity to a wide range of clients. Here I post thoughts and comments on search marketing, recent projects, and other things I find interesting.

A One Hour Prime Time Ad

Published Friday, October 14, 2005 by chris | E-mail this post

If you've ever watched The Apprentice you are familiar with the format: Two teams compete with each other to complete a task that does a lot more to feature a sponsor brand, than actually tell you much about the participants executive skills.

I keep watching even though I always feel that I've just watched a one-hour advertisement for the sponsor of the night. Well, apparently the show has paid off big time for some of the products featured on the show.

A highlight:

Pontiac had a 10-day goal to sell 1,000 cars (the Solstice) within 10 days of the show. They sold 1,000 cars within 41 minutes of the east coast airing. They eventually pre-sold their entire year's production before anyone had actually seen a model in person.

Here is an article on ClickZ that describes the results. There are some interesting details on Yahoo!'s involvement. Worth a read.