I wanted to keep this post nice and light (as if my last post wasn’t on the light side, lol), so I decided to travel down memory lane with you and talk about Ashton Kutcher. We all remember Ashton Kutcher, right? You know him from “That 70’s Show” and/or “Punked”. You may also be familiar with his friendships with stars like Diddy and Bruce Willis. Not to mention his highly publicized marriage to Demi Moore (Willis’ ex, by the by). Well, Kutcher has been out of the spotlight for quite some time. After a few years of seeing his face everywhere, now the only place he can be spotted is on the random Nikon “Cool Pix” commercials. Don’t get me wrong, those commercials are entertaining (he’s a funny guy), but he has definitely been amiss in the media lately.So it came as a surprise to me to find that Kutcher has decided to start a series on Facebook. I thought it so apropos that I couldn’t stop myself from writing about it. According Mediaweek, “the Ashton Kutcher-led production firm, Katalyst Media has entered into a partnership with leading social networking apps developer Slide Inc. to launch an original Web series on Facebook”. The series is entitled “KatalystHQ” and it is basically going to be a “mock reality” series that will allow for viewers to have a behind-the-scenes look at the ins and outs of the Katalyst offices in Los Angeles. The first episode, “Method Acting”, debuted on February 4, 2009. The hot buzz about this is that this marks the first time a series is being exclusively shown of Facebook, this is in part because all of these episodes are being distributed via Slide’s FunSpace app, which apparently reaches 150 million users on Facebook. It’s also pretty interesting because it will offer advertisers more space than is usually available on Facebook.
This is the question I pose to all of you PR guys and gals out there: did you have any idea that this was happening? Whether you care or not about Ashton Kutcher, if you didn’t have Facebook, would you have known about this venture? My answer to these questions is, no. So, what would you, as a PR professional in the making, have done differently to bring some media attention to this story? Let me know, give me some feedback; I would love to hear your thoughts. Until next time, have a great night, be safe and enjoy the rest of your weekend.
--Porsche
Picture retrieved from www.bittenandbound.com
Kutcher Debuts Series on Facebook
'KatalystHQ' provides product placement opportunities on social networking site
Feb 4, 2009
By Mike Shields, Mediaweek
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/creative/news/e3i9f631ea10a4997bcfbad1745fee47cfb
I had absolutely no idea about this until I read your blog. I have Facebook and I still didn’t know anything about this. What did they do to bring any attention to this? To get Facebook users aware of this new venture, I would have had made Facebook groups, a page dedicated to this, advertisements on the side of each users page, commercials or I would target large college newspapers to tell them about the venture. I would do something to get the word out. Because I personally like Ashton Kutcher and I’m definitely always on Facebook so I find it weird that I had to learn this from someone in my class who doesn’t even have Facebook. The people who are working behind this idea are in need of trying harder.
ReplyDeleteI am with Kiah. I had no Idea about this till I read you blog. Though I spend so little time on Facebook now, I probably wouldn't have noticed it if there was an advertisement on my homepage lol. I think maybe some commercials would have been a good idea. He is a well known person, so him on television promoting his venture on Facebook would have been noticed and did I say a really tight idea?....
ReplyDeleteMandla Deskins