Won 2 ADDYs - Best of Category!

While everyone else on the planet was watching the overly long and indulgent Oscars, Animax Entertainment was indulging in an Odyssey of our own at the LA North ADDY ceremony held at Odyssey restaurant in Granada Hills. While we missed seeing The Hurt Locker upset over Avatar, we did walk away from the ADDYs ceremony with two awards for Slotcar, the branded entertainment webisode series we produced for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's - Best of Category and a Special Judge's Award. We now move from the local level to the district level of the American Advertising Federation competition. Keeping fingers crossed.

Animax Wins an ADDY Award

Animax Entertainment just won a 2010 ADDY Award for our work on Slotcar, the branded entertainment series we produced for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's.

The ADDY® Awards run by the American Advertising Federation are the creative industry’s largest competition, attracting over 60,000 entries every year in local ADDY competitions. The mission of the ADDY is to recognize and reward creative excellence in the art of advertising, graphic design, web design, and in the elements of advertising, illustration and photography.

Platinum Award Winning

Animax just won a Platinum MarCom Award for Web Video for our work on Slotcar. The awards recognize achievements in creative excellence in marketing and communications programs. Slotcar is the branded entertainment video series we developed and produced for CKE's Hardee's and Carl's Jr. The award-winning series garnered over 2 million views during it's run.

Animax's Family Ties

Yes, a shameless reference. Animax Entertainment's Tim Jones talks about Branded Entertainment in a new article by Gennefer Snowfield in Tubefilter.

One of the other folks interviewed was none other than Justine Bateman. Best known as Mallory Keaton on "Family Ties," Bateman is now a founder of production company FM78.

YouTube News

Tim Jones, Animax COO, was quoted in a recent Mediaweek article about how YouTube is playing a role in the future of branded entertainment.

SLOTCAR in SHOOT

SLOTCAR, Animax Unplugged's branded entertainment series for Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, was covered by SHOOT magazine.

SLOTCAR - Ep2 Trash Talk'n Busch

Watch SLOTCAR !!!

Get your engines started! Hardee’s® has signed on as the premier sponsor of the original Animax Unplugged video series, SLOTCAR which can be seen at http://www.slotcar2009.com. The no-holds-barred, explosive webisodes, produced by Animax Unplugged, launches online this week and parodies one of America’s largest and favorite sports – stock car auto racing. Watch the teaser now!

Animax has a proven track record having won the first-ever Broadband Emmy for ESPN’s “Off-Mikes.” SLOTCAR will be directed by Richard D’Alessio (Unplugged TV), who has three Cannes Lions and has worked alongside Barry Levinson and Jerry Seinfeld on the pioneering series, “Adventures of Seinfeld and Superman.” D'Alessio was also the creative force behind “Knob Hockey,” a similar branded entertainment series spoofing the NHL.

The first full webisode featuring a Hardee’s slotcar will launch Sat., Feb. 7th on http://www.Slotcar2009.com and http://www.hardees.com. Carl’s Jr., is also a series sponsor and will be featured in future webisodes on http://www.carlsjr.com.

Read the full press release.

The Cold Hard Truth

We're in Cold Hard Flash again - and we didn't even know about the AdAge article - Off-Mikes is on the iPhone!

Hummer Fuels 4th Season of Off Mikes
By Aaron Simpson(Aaron Simpson)
The series, which is animated by Culver City-based Animax Entertainment, has already earned two Emmy nominations and one win. This season features a new cast member - Hummer. The auto maker is sponsoring the 4th season ...

Hummer-ing Along with ESPN

Season 4 of ESPN's Off-Mikes just launched. Crazy that it's already been four seasons! This season kicks off with a bunch of classic episodes. (Thank God because we are still cranking out the rest of the season's 5 new ones.)

The other new twist is that Off-Mikes is now officially a great example of brand entertainment at it's 2.0 finest. This new season is sponsored by Hummer in a very obvious way and in a sly way in every episode. The intro for the series since Season 2 has always had a bunch of visual gags referring to some of the all-time great partners - Sonny and Cher, Batman and Robin and Starsky and Hutch. Well instead of Starsky & Hutch's usual red and white Gran Torino, Mike and Mike get into their souped up Hummer. We even got to animate a Hummer commercial.

For trivia buffs, Hummer wasn't actually the first example of product placement in the Off-Mikes series. If you look closely, you'll also see the Animax banana peel logo in every episode. We even included our phone number on the side of a boat in one of them.