Spice Studios will join the hunt for hardcore sales on September 20 when it kicks off its marketing campaign for Spice Hotel.
The three-disc DVD set consists of more explicit versions of sex scenes — 18 in all — that originated as broadcast content on Spice Digital Networks, a Playboy Entertainment-owned entity, which 14 million addressable homes can access by satellite.
The set includes a free bonus, a High-Definition video disc playable on PCs. All four discs fit into a single DVD case to help retailers save on shelf space.
That’s just part of the innovative marketing strategy devised by Spice and its long-term distributor CinemaPlay Entertainment. But the core of the campaign, according to CinemaPlay president David Stidham, is what amounts to free advertising for retailers on Spice TV.
A CNN-style ticker listing retail locations where the DVD can be purchased will run along the bottom of the screen at various points during each Spice Hotel broadcast. The show is taped live over three nights, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, every week.
“We’ll have on-air talent — Dee or Holly Hollywood or whoever — say, ‘Spice Hotel is out on DVD. For the scenes we can’t show you on TV, get the DVD. Read the ticker on the screen below for a store near you,’” Stidham said.
“This is the first time, without a doubt, that a retail store can get free advertising in front of a real qualified adult audience. It will drive audience directly into the stores.”
Stores will be listed state by state, or in the case of the bigger operations, chain by chain. CinemaPlay has employed a similar strategy with great success on its website, where a section lists stores where CinemaPlay DVDs can be found.
Spice Hotel, which Stidham calls “the only live sex show in the world on broadcast television,” is also interactive. Viewers call in to tell the adult stars what to do sexually and to ask sexual self-help questions. The show, Stidham said, gets 52,000 calls a month.
“All of those 52,000 callers are going to be told, ‘Here, you can go watch the show and any one of the stores listed will be carrying the product.’”
Stidham said that from preliminary calls to some of the larger retail chains, “we feel they’re all jumping on board. As we roll this thing out over the next two or three weeks we’ll be seeing more. The ad campaign is going to start running on September 16, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and every subsequent weekend until the end of the year.”
After Spice Hotel, Spice Studios has at least four other titles scheduled for release that are in “various stages of approval,” all shot in High Definition.
Stidham said CinemaPlay has a multi-year deal with Spice to release their product. “And that product will most likely be assets that they have, and they’ll also have some high-end feature films that they have in development right now — really high-end feature films.”
For Spice Hotel sales or for free advertising on Spice TV, call 800.791.1551, fax 818.772.7715 or email [email protected].
