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Soap Life: The Docu-film

"The wife of our executive producer, John Grossman, who owns the production company NYPS, is a big fan of GENERAL HOSPITAL, and her whole thing was, 'You have the ability, so let's do something to save the soaps,'" explains producer Matthew D'Amato of how it all began. "We started doing research, and we sat down with a few actors, producers and directors, and said, 'Is this is a good idea? Could this work? Should we pursue it?' And we looked it up online and didn't see anything like this, so we thought it would be important to get started."

And the main goal of the film, D'Amato explains, is to generate enough buzz about the possible end of soaps to possibly prevent it from happening. "Hopefully this will get enough attention to help the genre, because we don't want to see it fade away," he says, adding that it's tentatively scheduled for a June 2012 release date at film festivals and possibly on networks such as Showtime. "We do want to see it at festivals, and we do want to see it on networks [so] people who aren't soap fans can watch the film and kind of relate to it, hear the stories and maybe want to pick them up or maybe do something about the genre. We have contacts we can send it to in order to get it out there, so hopefully it will get bigger and bigger!"

For more information on the project, visit www.facebook.com/soaplifedoc. To see a video about the project, visit www.youtube.com/user/SoapLifeDoc.

Morgan Fairchild to Vamp On Bones

Procter & Gamble moves from soap operas to tweets

Procter & Gamble Co., whose sponsorship and production of daytime TV dramas helped coin the term "soap operas," has pulled the plug after 77 years. Instead, the maker of Tide detergent, Ivory soap and Olay skincare is following its customers online with a big push on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

"The digital media has pretty much exploded," marketing chief Marc Pritchard said in an interview. "It's become very integrated with how we operate, it's become part of the way we do marketing."

The last P&G-produced soap opera, "As The World Turns," went off the air in September. The show was the leading daytime soap for decades, but had lost some two-thirds of its audience at the end.

Over the years, P&G produced 20 soap operas for radio and TV. But ratings for daytime dramas have been sinking for years, as women, their target audience, increasingly moved into the workplace, switched to talk and reality shows, and spent more time using online media and social networking sites.

P&G, the world's biggest advertiser, still buys individual commercials on daytime dramas. But the dollar amount has shrunk. P&G won't say by how much.

Dori Molitor, whose WomanWise LLC agency specializes in marketing brands to women, says big companies are realizing that social media is an efficient way to connect with customers.

"Social media has become mass media, and for women especially," she said. "I think for all marketers, these one-way, 30-second (TV) spots are very expensive, and are less effective for the way that women make decisions."

Marketing experts say the biggest companies were generally slow to adapt to the rapid rise of social networks, but that beverage rivals Coca-Cola Co. and Pepsico Inc., and P&G and fellow consumer products makers Unilever PLC and Johnson & Johnson are among those quickly making up for lost time.

In recent months, P&G began selling Pampers diapers on Facebook, offering an iPhone application for Always feminine products that allows women to track menstrual cycles and ask experts questions, and using social media to turn a campaign for the venerable Old Spice brand into a pop-culture icon.

The "Smell like a Man, Man" commercials starring hunky former football player Isaiah Mustafa became a YouTube sensation, drawing tens of millions of views and spawning parodies such as one with Sesame Street's Grover, and generated another round of attention with Twitter questions that Mustafa answered in videos — such as on ABC's Good Morning America when he suggested that President Barack Obama could improve standing with female voters by wearing only a towel and beginning speeches with "Hello, Ladies!"

The echo effect gives P&G a bigger bang for its nearly 9 billion bucks a year spent on advertising.

"It is such an effective advertising campaign that we are getting impressions that we did not pay for," CEO Bob McDonald told investors recently, recounting that he saw an editorial cartoon showing Obama on horseback, a takeoff on Mustafa's "I'm on a horse" Old Spice catch-phrase.

For a company known for measuring just about everything, P&G touts big numbers from Old Spice tracking:

• Number of impressions (people who saw, read, or heard about commercials): 1.8 billion.

• Number of YouTube views for Old Spice and related videos: 140 million and counting.

• Increase in Twitter followers for Old Spice: 2,700 percent.

P&G also said Old Spice sales are growing at double digits, taking more of the market for body washes and deodorant.

Just 20 months ago, P&G hosted "digital night" at its Cincinnati headquarters by inviting Google, Facebook, Twitter and other online experts to help test ways online and digital media could be used in marketing. By the Vancouver Winter Olympics last February, P&G was coordinating TV commercials with Facebook messages and tracking instant reactions to new commercials on Twitter.

P&G, which sponsored Team USA, unveiled sentimental "Thank you, Mom!" commercials at the Olympics that it estimates added $100 million in sales. The campaign has included Facebook essay contests and e-Cards for mothers.

P&G says it's still exploring new uses for social media.

"It's kind of the oldest form of marketing — word of mouth — with the newest form of technology," Pritchard said.

Agnes Nixon Launches Website!

Old Proctor & Gamble Soaps Are Now Online

Facts

1. The powers-that-be found a unique way to cope with the theft of Search For Tomorrow’s August 4, 1983 episode tape. Instead of retaping the show, the soap decided to turn the situation into a publicity stunt and performed the episode live.

2. After jumping from CBS to NBC in 1982, SFT made a last-ditch effort in March, 1986 to gain an audience by destroying the town of Henderson in a flood. The stunt didn’t work, and the show last aired on December 26, 1986.

3. Search aired as a fifteen-minute serial from its debut in 1951 until 1968

4. Production Company: Procter & Gamble Productions

5. The show switched from live broadcasts to recorded telecasts in March 1967, went to color on September 11, 1967, and expanded to a half-hour on September 9, 1968

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