AOL Launches Eight-Week Broadband Promo

America Online launched a two-month promotion to hype the benefits of AOL Broadband, on which the company has pinned its hopes of a turnaround.

“Look, Listen & Play” will give AOL users a taste of the summer’s upcoming musical and movie releases, as AOL Time Warner’s struggling ISP unit tries to leverage the strength of the parent company’s vast stable of content.

The promo will give fans sneak peeks at footage from “Terminator 3” and the premiere episode of “Sex and the City,” as well as clips from new releases by Pink, Beyonce Knowles, and Michelle Branch. The film and TV clips come courtesy of Warner Bros. and HBO, respectively.

“We developed ‘Look, Listen & Play’ as a way to showcase AOL Entertainment’s exclusive and original content through both creative online programming and strategic offline marketing,” said Kevin Conroy, AOL, a senior vice president at AOL Entertainment.

AOL lined up a number of retail chains, including Circuit City, CompUSA and Gateway, to promote “Look, Listen & Play” through the tried and true AOL approach: the CD-ROM giveaway. Customers can pick up “Look, Listen & Play” CDs that promote the AOL 8.0 and AOL for Broadband.

Vanilla Coke signed up as a sponsor, running Flash banners and streaming video ads around the promotion’s exclusive content offerings.

AOL Entertainment is an important selling feature for the ISP’s fledgling broadband service. Through the company’s stable of media properties, it offers exclusive content ranging from video games to movies to music.

For example, AOL said the Foo Fighters would perform as part of its BroadBAND Rocks weekly series. In conjunction with the performance, AOL linked up with Infinity Broadcasting to promote the concert in Washington, D.C., and give away tickets to the performance on its radio stations. AOL plans to sign on more acts for the series.

AOL hopes its broadband offering can help turn around fortunes at the ISP, where the collapse of online advertising has left a sea of red ink and recriminations. Recently, the unit reported some positive news, saying it would likely take in more ad revenue this year than in 2002. Yesterday, AOL’s ad sales chief retired.