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‘Breaking Bad’ Props to Be Auctioned

September 20, 2013 by

If your idea of living the dream involves banging around the desert in a Pontiac Aztek that has seen better days, the dream just got closer.

Screenbid.com, a new auction site focused on the sale of movie and television props, is set to go live on Friday with a preview of its first offerings: about 250 items from AMC’s “Breaking Bad” television series, including a dull green Aztek that was used, and abused, by the show’s meth-dealing antihero, Walter White.

“We have Walt’s Aztek and the Monte Carlo,” along with other paraphernalia, said Bill Block, a film producer who is joining the entrepreneur Jeffrey A. Dash in founding Screenbid.

The site, they said, is intended to help studios dispose of props systematically, and profitably — props that might otherwise be locked in storage, or offered more haphazardly on eBay or Craigslist, sometimes by individuals who simply walked them off a set.

The “Breaking Bad” auction, they said, was organized in collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment, whose television unit helped produce the show.

According to Mr. Block and Mr. Dash, who spoke by telephone earlier this week, the auction will actually begin on Sept. 29, when the last episode of the series is shown. (Some items will not be listed until then, to protect plot points.) Sony, they said, has set an undisclosed reserve price on items, which will be withheld if the price is not met.

The price of Hollywood collectibles is notoriously elastic — who’d have figured on the $5,000 bid for 12 cans of beer at the “Lost” auction, run by Profiles in History? But Mr. Block reckoned that the “Breaking Bad” props could yield more than $2 million.

Sony Pictures, the new site’s founders said, is already in line with a second auction, which will sell memorabilia from its film “This Is the End,” including furnishings from the movie’s version of James Franco’s home. Props and other items on Screenbid, they added, are authenticated by the studio or producers and artists involved with the sale.

The “Breaking Bad” sale already lists Hazmat suits, a charred pink Teddy bear, a Lucite-encased grill and various automobiles familiar to viewers of the series, about White, a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a kingpin in New Mexico’s methamphetamine trade.

But Sony is not selling White’s mobile meth lab, a Fleetwood Bounder RV, said Mr. Block. “They’re keeping it for their on-the-lot tour,” he explained.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/business/media/breaking-bad-props-to-be-auctioned.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Advertising: Celebrating ‘South Park’ by Bringing It to Life

July 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

As part of an extensive promotional campaign, Year of the Fan, to observe the 15th season of the show, Comedy Central, which has been presenting “South Park” since August 1997, is teaming up with the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo to produce 1.5 million packages of Cheesy Poofs to be sold in Wal-Mart stores beginning next month.

Anyone reluctant to pay $2.99 for a 2 3/8-ounce bag of Cheesy Poofs can get a free bag at an exhibit, called the Ultimate “South Park” Fan Experience, that Comedy Central is sponsoring in conjunction with Comic-Con International in San Diego July 21 to 24. The real version of the imaginary snack will be available at a replica of the school cafeteria from “South Park,” which will be near a replica of South Park Avenue, another major feature of the make-believe South Park, Colo.

The exhibit, running 15,000 square feet, will also offer artwork, memorabilia, photo and tattoo booths, trivia contests and a station to create “South Park” avatars that can be uploaded to profile pages in social media like Facebook.

Anne Garefino, who is an executive producer of “South Park” along with its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, likened the exhibit to the street fairs she attended as a child growing up in New Jersey.

She said she hoped the attractions would offer “silly fun, playful things” as a way to thank viewers.

“To be honest, Matt and Trey said, ‘We don’t want to be celebrated,’ ” Ms. Garefino said. Rather, she added, the concept became “let’s do it” but “let’s make it about the fans.”

It is unusual, but not unprecedented, for fans of a television series to tour the set on which their favorite show is filmed. It is more difficult to do so when the series is animated and the set does not exist, much less the location the set represents.

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But bringing elements of “South Park” to life, in what is known as experiential marketing, is a way for Comedy Central to strengthen connections with viewers. That is increasingly important when competition among entertainment properties for hearts, minds and eyeballs is fiercer than ever.

“Right now is ‘South Park’s’ moment in the sun,” said Michele Ganeless, president of Comedy Central in New York, part of the MTV Networks unit of Viacom. “Fifteen years of a success on television, let alone on cable, is an achievement.”

“Making it about the fans” is a way to counter possible perceptions that the campaign is self-congratulatory, Ms. Ganeless said, and it is appropriate because “South Park” has “such a devoted fan base.”

The budget for the campaign is being estimated at $3 million to $5 million. The equivalent media value of the air time and online inventory being devoted to the campaign — on other MTV Networks properties in addition to Comedy Central — is being estimated at $10 million.

There will also be an hourlong documentary about “South Park” in the fall, on Comedy Central and “some of the other networks as well,” Ms. Ganeless said.

As befits a campaign about a series with a passionate following among men ages 18 to 34, the campaign will have a considerable presence in new media, among them Facebook, at facebook.com/southpark; Twitter, at twitter.com/SouthPark; the “South Park” Web site, southparkstudios.com; and the Comedy Central Web site, comedycentral.com.

Bringing a fictional snack to life also makes sense given the dietary proclivities of that audience.

“It’s fair to say the viewers of programs on Comedy Central overlap well with consumers of our products,” said Chris Kuechenmeister, a spokesman at Frito-Lay in Plano, Tex.

“This is the first time we’ve moved into something like this,” he added. “It seemed like a nice thing to try.”

This is, however, not the first time that cartoon brands have been turned into actual products for flesh-and-blood people. For instance, to promote “The Simpsons Movie” in 2007, products like Frosted KrustyO’s cereal and Buzz Cola were sold in 7-Eleven stores; some stores were even temporarily converted to Kwik-E-Marts, after the inconvenient convenience store in “The Simpsons.”

Being able “to step into an animated world is awesome,” said Eric Murphy, president, chief executive and creative director at Pop2Life in New York, a marketing promotion agency that is building the exhibit for Comedy Central.

“Giving ‘South Park’ fans a chance to physically be part of ‘South Park’ is priceless,” he added.

Comedy Central is presenting the 15th season of “South Park” in two parts. The first part ran from April 27 to June 8 and the second is scheduled from Oct. 15 to Nov. 16. The series is renewed for a 17th season through 2013, Ms. Ganeless said.

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It is coincidental, Ms. Ganeless and Ms. Garefino said, that the campaign will be taking place as Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker bask in the success of their hit Broadway musical, “The Book of Mormon,” on which Ms. Garefino is a lead producer.

“Year of the Fan has been in development for the last 24 months, before we knew when ‘The Book of Mormon’ would launch,” Ms. Ganeless said.

When Ms. Garefino was asked whether the people behind “South Park” had considered a musical version, she replied: “After the third season, someone asked us to consider it. But we couldn’t think of a way to put the characters on Broadway because of their big, blinky eyes.”

Ms. Garefino, who lives in Los Angeles, is in New York “casting for vacation swings,” or replacements, for “The Book of Mormon.”

“It’s a big eye-opener for me,” Ms. Garefino said. “Cartman never takes a day off.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=38ce2bece80fa51538db9f1d878c5a14

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Once a Great Flop, Now Sold for Billions

April 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The $2.35 billion deal with Diamond Foods is also a milestone for Procter as it sheds its last food brand after having already sold Jif peanut butter, Folger’s coffee and Crisco shortening.

The company’s expertise in edible oils was used widely by the potato chip industry in the 1950s and 1960s, and shaped the invention of Pringles, the thinly sliced saddle-shaped crisp. Company officials still aren’t sure how the chips got their name, but one theory holds that two Procter advertising employees lived on Pringle Drive in Cincinnati and the name paired well with potato.

The creator of the famous Pringles can was so proud of his invention that he asked that his ashes be buried in one.

Yet Pringles, which is basically dehydrated potato flakes that are rolled and then fried, was not universally loved.

It was such a dud in its early years that some called for Procter to dump the brand. The brand did not take off until the company tweaked the flavor in 1980 and introduced the “Fever for the Flavor of Pringles” advertising campaign.

By the late 1990s, Pringles had become a $1 billion a year brand. On the television series “Ally McBeal,” Ally got into a grocery store skirmish with a woman over a can of Pringles.

“When I was there 30 years ago, it was dead,” said Charles Jarvie, vice president of Procter’s food division in the late 1970s. “It’s a great example where they just didn’t give up.”

Nonetheless, the sale of Pringles was not unexpected, as Procter has refocused its attention on the core businesses of beauty, grooming and household care. “Pringles is an iconic, billion-dollar snack brand with significant global manufacturing and supply chain infrastructure,” said Michael J. Mendes, chief executive of Diamond Foods, in a statement. The $2.35 billion transaction includes $1.5 billion of Diamond stock, which goes to P. G. shareholders who elect to participate in the deal, and the assumption of $850 million of Pringles debt by the merged company.

The sale will barely make a dent in Procter, with $80 billion in annual sales.

“It really didn’t fit what they are looking to do,” said Jason Gere, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets who tracks the company. “For a long time, this was one of those products that felt more appropriate in someone else’s portfolio.”

Pringles has kept up with some of its rivals in the flavor department, offering salt-and-vinegar, cheddar and pizza versions. While Pringles’ sales had been growing of late, Mr. Gere said that they had not been nearly as robust as many of P. G.’s other megabrands.

Mr. Jarvie said the company had hoped to replicate the great science breakthroughs it had with laundry detergents, toothpaste and disposable diapers. But, he said, “food is as much an art as it is a science. Procter never got that.”

In the 1950s, roughly 25 percent of the company’s sales were in food, particularly in shortening and other cooking oils.

“We provided most of the oils to the potato chip industry,’ said Greg McCoy, a corporate archivist. “We were already frying up potato chips to test the oils.”

But it lacked a distribution network to ship perishable bags of chips to grocery stores, so it directed its researchers to come up with a longer-lasting chip that could be distributed with P. G.’s existing distribution network.

“They knew from the get-go that they wanted it to be uniform in size, texture and taste,” Mr. McCoy said. Procter wanted to create a perfect chip to address consumer complaints about broken and stale chips and air in the bags.

The task was assigned to a chemist named Fredric Baur, who from 1956 to 1958 created Pringles’ saddle shape out of fried dough and also its can. But Mr. Baur could not figure out how to make the chips taste good, and he eventually was pulled off the Pringles job to work on another brand. In the mid-1960s, another Procter researcher, Alexander Liepa, dusted off Mr. Baur’s work and set a out to improve on the Pringles taste, which he succeeded in doing.

Another theory for the Pringles’ name comes from Mr. Liepa’s patent, which credits research done in the 1940s by Mark Pringle, Mr. McCoy said.

The chips were test marketed in Evansville, Ind., in 1968 and were an “overnight sensation,” Mr. McCoy said. But when the chips went national in 1971, the taste issue resurfaced. Officially, Pringles are called crisps rather than chips, the result of a long-ago fracas between competitors and regulators over what could be called a potato chip.

In the 1993 book “Soap Opera: the Inside Story of Procter Gamble,” the author Alecia Swasy writes that Pringles were considered one of the great flops in company history, “the P. G. Edsel.” Mr. McCoy maintains, however, that Pringles gained traction after a makeover in 1980s, which included a thicker chip and a new focus on the taste, rather than the can.

Mr. Baur never lost his affection for the Pringles’ can, which he invented. When he died in 2008, his children honored his request to bury his ashes in a Pringles can. In an interview with Time, Mr. Baur’s son, Larry, said he and his siblings stopped at a Walgreen’s to pick up a can of Pringles on the way to the funeral home.

“My siblings and I briefly debated what flavor to use,” Mr. Baur said, in the Time interview. “But I said, ‘Look we need to use the original.’ ”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=228f11528c5b5eedfb728e55d3575624

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