I’m behind on this, but I finally spent some time on Honeyshed the past couple of days and I'm, well, very underwhelmed. It launched it late October and it’s still in beta, so maybe that explains why it’s somewhat slow to run. And maybe I just didn’t figure out how to do it, but I would’ve like a way to pause, rewind, etc. Sometimes there was a way to do that and sometimes there wasn’t. And lastly, the sound seemed really low, so I had a hard time hearing it sometimes. But mainly, I would’ve like it to be more fun.
Just reading on Fast Company that Publicis has already pumped $25 million into this venture! They keep calling it MTV meets QVC, but not really feeling that. But let’s say that it was really MTV meets QVC, what’s so new about that? They keep talking about it as branded entertainment, but this is really just QVC on the internet, there’s no real entertainment going on here. I mean, it’s really just long form commercials, or maybe it’s short form infomercials, but entertainment is kinda’ a stretch. The more I’ve watched it, the more it is exactly QVC and the fact that their hosts are younger, doesn’t really change the fact that it’s shopping on the internet. The segment that I’ve just watched involving two of their hostesses in high heels talking to someone on the phone reminded me of watching the old Robyn Bird show here on old cable channel 35 in NYC.
You can tell how much the industry likes to drink the Kool Aid when you hear industry trades talking about it. How is what they’re doing going to “erase the line between branding and entertainment altogether” as Business Week said back in May. Is QVC branded entertainment? According to everything being said about Honeyshed, it must be! Maybe I just ether missed the character-driven sketch shows (again according to Business Week) or maybe they haven’t started that part of their programming yet. What I saw was folks chatting about this and that and the three guys talking about videos were just painful to watch! OK, now they’re doing something with syrup, but, it was pretty lame. C|NET wasn’t impressed by Honeyshed, nor was David Armano who according to the C|NET article said it "feels like traditional advertising served up over the Internet."
Reading through the blogosphere, they seem to take a hit for saying that people love brands. And you know what, we do. We do like brands. And clearly, we’ll buy stuff being pitched. I got no problem with that part of the argument. But I would argue that what’s happening here is nothing new. The fact that we put things on the internet, doesn’t by itself make something new, hip & exciting. As I said in a recent presentation, does that don’t know history are destined to think everything they do is new.
While I’m writing this, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show just started and let me tell you, that’s some branded entertainment!
I could not finish reading this article. The misspellings are killing me.
Spell check your posts.
Posted by: jason | April 24, 2008 at 04:14 PM
I tried to send an e-mail to Jason to ask him for additional clarification on his comment, but his e-mail bounced back. So Jason:
Thanks for your comments. I did a spell check and actually only found two typos:
1. Underwhelmed which I actually think could be spelt both as one word or two (I spelt it as one world)
2. Mainy was misspelled and was corrected.
3. I do spell “kinda’” wrong on purpose, as that’s how I speak.
That hardly seems to be so many typos that you couldn’t finish reading them, so I’m thinking that maybe both my spellchecking software & I are missing something. Were there other typos? Or was it just because the two typos were in the first paragraph. I thank you for your help in making our blog better!
Posted by: David Polinchock | April 24, 2008 at 04:58 PM
I kinda talk that way too. Maybe Jason is confused over terms that he thinks are misspelled but are not, because he's not understanding what the word represents. For example, perhaps a few links would help -- like a link to the Fast Company article that reinforces the reference to "Publicis". Or, perhaps Jason is worried about your missing dash in the representation of Kool-Aid (he could note here that even Wikipedia misses the representation of the caps on the 'aid' in many cases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool-Aid). Or maybe he just doesn't have anything better to do.
Posted by: Paula Thornton | April 24, 2008 at 06:20 PM