Bonnier Corp.’s Florida Travel & Life is launching a branded event series called “The Good Life” in November.

The series, designed to further engage readers in the brand, is part of a new wave of magazine-launched events. Just today, I posted a story about the marketing efforts of Sobefit magazine, which will depend heavily on events to spread its brand name. We’ve also covered events by Niche Media, TVGuide and a host of other magazines in the pages of DMNews this year. Events, my friends, are hot.

And why wouldn’t they be? Today’s consumers demand entertainment in their advertising, and what’s more entertaining than open bars, swanky locales and the possibility of a celeb sighting?

Particularly with lifestyle magazines, events are a great way to show off that, yes, your editors can talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to living it up with panache. Bonnier’s latest series, for instance, will feature food and wine tastings, travel and photo tips from the editors, art, fashion, entertainment, and even wealth management seminars — which I’d say pretty much encompassing all the primary concerns of Florida’s fashionable set.

While there’s a lot of coverage of Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch acquisition, I found myself pondering the impact of another merger this morning. Electronic shop and direct marketer Best Buy agreed to purchase music sharing site Napster today.

The investment not only shows the promise of digital music, but also the power of a good list. Napster’s subscribers are known music lovers and the company has already invested heavily in new music distribution platforms. Reporter Mary Hurn covered the trends surrounding Web 2.0 music marketing for us last month.

Given Best Buy’s history with successful direct marketing tactics, I’m looking forward to watching how the retailer might leverage new names.

Magazine Publishers of America launched a new ad campaign today — aimed at advertisers.

The campaign, which carries the tagline “Under the influence of magazines,” is designed to show advertisers just how effective print advertising really is. Photos used in the campaign show consumers surrounded by products that they were compelled to purchase after seeing ads in magazines. Participating brands include MINI Cooper, Adidas and Haagen-Dazs. Independent research numbers supporting the effectiveness of magazine advertising will also run in the ads.

Funnily enough, seven of the ads are running online, while three are running in print. You can see them in advertising trade publications and corresponding Web sites, as well as in complimentary copies of MPA titles.

This campaign is MPA’s first with agency Toy New York.

According to a new study by The Conference Board and TNS nearly one-fifth of American households that use the Web, use it to watch online broadcasts. This is twice as many as 2006. The release put out by the two research firms says the top two sites for viewership are “the official TV channel homepage and YouTube.com.”

Consumers in the study cited not liking a set schedule, being able to watch on their own time, avoiding commercials and portability as some of their reasons for online video viewing. In addition to these stats, the study also estimated that nearly 72 percent of online households use the internet for entertainment purposes on a daily basis. One in 10 says entertainment is the most imporant internet activity to them.

Time will tell if online video continues to attract viewers at such a rapid rate or if it will eventually reach a plateau. It will also be interesting to see how marketers continue to leverage these platforms for new initiatives in direct marketing, considering this quick increase in viewership.

Companies usually depend on campaigns to create buzz, but in the case of Major League Baseball’s “There’s Only One October” campaign, MLB is hoping teams can create their own buzz on the field and strengthen the overall message being presented in the campaign: that playoff baseball is too exciting to miss.

The commercials will evolve as the races evolve, featuring more prominentaly players that are having a greater impact on their team’s chances of reaching the postseason.

The $65 million push - the most expensive ever by MLB, $15 million more than last year’s playoff campaign - debuted yesterday and includes stars from FOX and TBS, both of which will air playoff games, and plays up both historical playoff moments as well as the excitement of this year’s pennant races.

Last year’s campaign of the same name featured Dane Cook, but MLB and the networks decided to cross promote the playoffs with network personalities this year. Stars from the networks such as Randy Jackson, Jeff Foxworthy, Frank Caliendo and Bill Engvall are seen blogging about the excitement of October because “Blogging is kind of the high currency in the interactive space right now,” according to Tim Brosnan, MLB’s executive vice president for business.

The campaign, created by McCann Erickson with the support of MLB Productions, will be supported by online, print and radio supplements.

Despite criticism for being too TV focused in its Olympics coverage, NBCOlympics.com fared well during this summer’s games.

According to the NY Times, while the television ratings for the Olympics coverage was record breaking this month, NBC’s Web site saw its own boom in traffic, “serving 1.2 billion pages and 72 million video streams through Saturday, more than doubling the combined traffic to its site during the 2004 Games in Athens and the 2006 Games in Turin.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/sports/olympics/25online.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Ever since last year when social networking giant Facebook let marketers come in and make pages, a host of companies have been using the site to promote their products. Some have created pages, others have created tools that consumers can interact with including widgets. And now those widgets can be measured, another step in the dm direction that the social networks are taking.

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i55fbb1a3b41a2bcd62c2a6872493fadd

Rock band AC/DC has agreed to sell its next album, Black Ice, through Wal-mart and on its band Web site exclusively.

I was surprised to hear that the heavy metal pioneer’s first original album in 8 years was going for less than $12 retail. The news certainly supports the trend that CD sales have been anything but ‘dynamite’ lately, which Mary Hurn also covers in a recent vertical feature in DMNews.

By partnering with a large retailer, the group does get the backing of in-store marketing. That, in addition to the exclusive nature and low price, will be a good test for the bands popularity. I’ll be interested to see if they are still finding, “It’s a long way to the top, if you want to  rock ‘n roll.”

Haagen-Dazs has launched a viral video on YouTube designed to bring awareness to the honey bee cause and to give viewers a look at the “unique hive dance” of the honey bee. After launching on July 15, the video–aptly named “Bee-Boy dance crew drops dead”–already has more than 50,000 views on the video sharing site.

“Bee pollination is essential for ingredients in nearly 40 percent of our super-premium flavors,” says the company on its Help the Honeybees Web site. Visitors to the site can purchase merchandise to help fund honey bee research. You can also design your own animated honey bee and e-mail it to your friends.

Earlier this week, the FCC announced that it would be reviewing rules on how TV shows inform viewers of in-show advertising practices. IE: that Gossip Girl episode that was pretty much an hour-long (and delightfully drama-filled!) Victoria’s Secret commercial may be the sort of thing that comes with a disclaimer in the future.
The Washington Post quoted FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin explaining, “We want to make sure consumers understand and are aware that they are being advertised to. We ask how we should update our rules to reflect current trends in the industry.”
In a way, he’s right: it’s probably better to be safe than sorry when it comes to transparency.
On the other hand, I’m a little bit offended that they feel the need to warn us of these things. How many people really don’t think that Victoria’s Secret paid to be mentioned 9 bajillion times during a much-talked-about primetime show? And if they don’t realize it, is it really hurting them?
If a marketer is clever enough to organically integrate their product into a show, kudos to them: I think it makes the show more believable because, yes, real people do shop at chain stores and drink Coca-Cola and eat at McDonald’s…though maybe not the people on Gossip Girl. If you’re getting your brand name out there without annoying consumers and maybe even adding to their favorite shows, I would call that great marketing, and not a threat.