UKNM: Herpes, pregnant women and other custom publishing projects...

[Mat Morrison]

Cafe Herpe is SmithKline Beecham's useful little marketing programme for

people with embarrassingly personal itches. (http://www.cafeherpe.com)


P&G and Time Inc. New Media publish ParentTime. Not sure what P&G gets

out of it, but I suspect it's names and addresses of prospects. Can

anyone confirm? (incidentally, I understand that many young-family DM

databases are cross-indexed against the Births & Deaths register to

avoid those little awkward moments that can destroy brand loyalty --

anyone got any confirmation on this, too?)


Back to the main purpose: Does anyone have any wonderful examples of

brands employing custom publishers to develop "sensitive, soft-sell

educational communities"? 


There's a name in TV for this --"advertiser-created programming" (e.g.

soap-operas) . It's a good way of creating your own media opportunities

and audiences. But does it happen on-line?


The community should be created by the sponsor to overcome the lack of

available media opportunities. The community site should NOT have the

Sponsor's name in the URL or Site Name. All the content should be third

party, and "objective" -- but there would be clear ownership of the

promotional spots.


Anyone help?


Mat


P.S. No more Time Inc. New Media examples, please = )


Also posted to The Wall