Philips CD-I 1992-93 The Great Wall DRTV Story-mercial Paul Fredrickson 2021-07-04 | This was a break-through infomercial I led the creation of which won 7 awards and was HIGHLY effective generating a 900% sales increase and cut retail sell-through time by 9x to less than 5 minutes selling out all units at retail. It was the first infomercial created by a blue-chip company to brand, sell and drive retail sell-through. This was produced in a new form, dubbed a "Storymercial" because it explained the product through an entertaining story rather than a hard-sell infomercial format. Winner of the NY Film Festival, 2 Clio's, 1 Ad Age award and 3 NIMA awards as well as a top of the fold page 1 feature article in the NY Times business section. It was the first of it's kind to be allowed to be shown on the major networks in prime time.
AV Nirvana CEDIA 22 Top 3 Demo Experiences Dark Horse NextLevel Acoustics Paul Fredrickson 2023-08-09 | This is an excerpt from an AV Nirvana report talking about their top 3 home theater demo experiences at CEDIA 2022. The affordable "Dark Horse" was the Reference Cinema system by Next Level Acoustics
HGTV Facility Tour with Mark Hale Paul Fredrickson 2023-06-08 | This video was shot by the network featuring our VP of Operations Mark Hale in 1995 near the time of the birth of the Network while I was VP of Marketing. HGTV was the first all-digital TV network and production studio in the US, built for the upcoming HDTV format. Nearly everything at the network was done with new server-based technology used for production, post-production and for most of our broadcasting. This facility not only created programming for HGTV, but was a production studio for many other networks such as Discovery, A&E, The Food Network and many others. I recall we quickly became the #1 cable TV production studio in the US in addition to becoming the fastest growing cable TV network in the US. We even benefitted my past employer Philips because the new video servers were created by Philips BTS division (Broadcast Television Systems).
CDi We Mean Business! Paul Fredrickson 2023-06-08 | This is a promotional video we created in our Professional CD Interactive group that was part of my overall CD I responsibility at Philips. While we were marketing the new interactive format to consumers, this group of dedicated sales and marketing pros created a national network of over 100 Value Added Resellers. These VAR's developed over 700 professional interactive titles for major corporate customers including IBM, Merck, Bell Atlantic and others. They also sold all of the authoring hardware and software including the first available CD Recorders and CD Rom drives for computers and portable CDI players with built-in color LCD screens. This video was used for our Philips national VAR conference. We were fortunate to have a professional video producer on staff, Bernie Mitchell.
Philips CES Summer CES 1992 Paul Fredrickson 2023-06-08 | Here's a summary video about our 1992 Philips Brand booth that also featured Philips' Media and CD Interactive. This was the first time Philips Brand was on the floor of the CES show and was also the first year the show was open during the last two days to the public - so there would be a lot of extra media coverage. As a result, we were prominently featured on all of the major networks news coverage of the show. This was one of the largest exhibits at the CES show that year and we had prime placement on the floor. I drove the overall design of the booth with our expert staff of exhibit people and coordination with our products groups. I also involved Philips Labs for the first time and created a special theater showing digital HDTV demonstrations to consumers - some of the first done for the public and the media. This also featured CD Interactive, our interactive TV format and Digital Compact Cassetts, our new CD quality digital tape format backwards compatible to analog tape. A special promotional video played on a Philips Videowall in the booth created by a division of Polygram Pictures (and future Oscar winner Steve Golan's Propaganda Films) featuring a really far out futuristic character named Kilby played by German actor Udo Kier.
1990 Magnavox National Advertising Paul Fredrickson 2023-06-08 | I became VP of Merchandising and Communications at Philips which included responsibility for all consumer electronics advertising. Our primary brand, Magnavox was being revived with a new strategy promoting the wide range of products using the humor of The Smother's Brothers in a campaign called Smart Very Smart. I convinced our CEO that we should create this campaign in coordination with our product groups and leverage the campaign to drive expanded retail distribution in coordination with merchandising and sales programs. This advertising repositioned the Brand, drove awareness with probably the biggest budget for a mainstream CE brand at the time. It was also used to get dealers to display and carry a wider range of Magnavox products. That's where I tied in Merchandising programs in sync with the advertising to expand our retail distribution using retailer tagged supplemental spots as a carrot to get a deeper assortment in their stores. We had a major increase in Brand awareness and share across all categories as a result. A wonderful team effort by many people made this happen. After the success of this campaign we continued the "Smart Very Smart" campaign with Monty Python's John Cleese to even greater success.
1986 Magnavox National Advertising CD Player Paul Fredrickson 2023-06-08 | This was a 30 second national advertising TV spot that was created at the time I joined Philips to take over marketing of the CD player. They previously did not have a Marketing Manager dedicated to CD. This commercial was already produced by the time I joined and while it was cute, promoting the proprietary "Favorite Track Selection" feature of their players, it wasn't relevant to the target market. I began a dialogue with all of the audio enthusiast magazines promoting our unique technology with 16 bit/4 times oversampling that resulted in better sound quality from our players. I also developed relationships with audiophile companies who purchased our players to modify and brand them to sell to audiophiles. This and other efforts quickly raised our profile, expanded our retail distribution and resulted in a 10x improvement in market share. Plus, a promotion for me after 6 months at Philips.
Paul Fredrickson 1980 RCA Training Session on Video Formats Paul Fredrickson 2023-06-08 | I recently discovered this video of me from an RCA distributor training session educating the distributor sales personnel from around the US on the different video formats. This was in the midst of the VCR format battle between Betamax and VHS. VHS was winning by a long-shot even though it was the second to enter the market with RCA leading the way for the format commanding #1 market share by a substantial margin. I was a VCR evangelist travelling all over the US right out of college first doing this in Michigan and then training distributors and major retailers throughout the US. Shortly after this I became a District Sales Manager for the North East US, the largest territory in the country doing over 25% of RCA's VCR business. I moved to Boston and was selling from the RCA factory to distributors in New York and New England. We were doing more business in that territory than Panasonic was doing in the whole USA. It was a great experience at a young age.
1995 HGTV Network Promo for Advertisers Paul Fredrickson 2021-07-26 | This is a overview video we did to promote the HGTV Network to prospective advertisers in '95 when I was VP of Marketing for HGTV. The network was highly successful growing the subscriber base faster than any cable network in history to that point. We were also highly successful in booking 100% of our ad-time in 1995 with advertising from quality companies and ran 24 hours of 100% original programming from the start. This was unheard of from new cable networks at the time. We wrapped all of this with comprehensive marketing and sales efforts aimed at 3 constituents - Affiliates (eg. cable and satellite to drive subscribers), Advertisers (to generate revenue) and Consumers (to drive demand). Today it is a good look back at the comprehensive story of the beginning of the network.
Philips - Magnavox Brand John Cleese ad campaign 91 92 Paul Fredrickson 2021-07-06 | This was the first round of ads featuring John Cleese in a campaign I was a key instigator of shortly after I became VP of Merchandising and Communications at Philips. Our advertising had become a stand-alone function driven by our CEO and I was blunt with him after my new assignment that this needed to change. I told our CEO we needed to change direction in our advertising to sync more tightly with marketing and sales and show the wide diversity of Magnavox Brand products - the public perception was we were only a TV brand. With the talented new spokesman John Cleese, we could use these campaigns to drive wider retail adoption of more categories of Magnavox products at retail. This new strategy was fully supported by our President, Don Johnstone, VP of Marketing Jim Newbrough, Magnavox Sales VP, Bill Ulewicz and Larry Rau's Merchandising programs which beautifully tied into the ad campaigns. Mike Keel, Director of Advertising was initially skeptical of my promotion as his new boss, but I changed the MO of our advertising to be closer to our product marketing and sales objectives, which I explained to our agency in NYC, BSB and Mike, which they embraced leading to this highly successful multi-year John Cleese campaign that brought strong growth and profit to our US business.
Philips CD-I News featuring John Moschitta Jr. The Fast Talking Guy Paul Fredrickson 2021-07-04 | This was a "coming attractions" promotional trade video our Philips Interactive Media software group created highlighting new CD-I titles in a mock news show format featuring Guinness Book of Records John Moschitta, a special talent for his ability to speak 586 words per minute. John appeared in 750 TV commercials as well as roles in film, TV and voice acting.
Philips CD-I 1994 Campaign Phil Hartmann (RIP ex SNL) Campaign Promo & National TV Spot Paul Fredrickson 2021-07-04 | For 94 we enlisted funny-man Phil Hartmann (who won out over Ben Stiller in the talent reel shootout) to feature in a new campaign promoting a new lower-cost player enlisting Phil's ability to play many different characters. This is an introduction reel we had made with Phil to introduce him and the campaign to retail partners and trade media in which we previewed the first TV spot he appeared in.
Philips - Magnavox Brand National Advertising featuring John Cleese Paul Fredrickson 2021-07-04 | John Cleese starred in our campaign to reposition the Magnavox brand image from "just a TV" brand to a wide-ranging consumer electronics brand which was coordinated with a highly successful major multi-category product placement merchandising strategy across multiple channels of national retail distribution. This drove a major increase in market share, revenues and profits for Philips in the US.
A Tiny Tale Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-15 | A fun green screen video created at the Sony broadcast camera booth during the 1990 NAB show in Atlanta. Show goers could go on set and "act" out a part which inserts them into a cute video. I brought this home to my very young boys at the time and they were frightened seeing me miniaturized and chased around a room by a giant cat and toy dinosaur.
1979 Oct USGP F1 Watkins Glen Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Home video from the terribly wet 1979 USGP F1 race at Watkins Glen in October. It was miserably wet on Friday and Saturday prompting us to get a motorhome for the following year, which had relatively nice weather.
1992 Magnavox TV commercial featuring John Cleese Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Another spot featuring John Cleese very effectively using his humor and improv skills to create a highly effective advertising campaign which we successfully leveraged to gain a larger multi-category footprint at over 20,000 major retail outlets.
1992 Magnavox TV ad John Cleese Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | One of several ads created by BSB for our new Magnavox campaign featuring the brilliant John Cleese. I developed an advertising and merchandising strategy that re-positioned Magnavox more clearly as a diverse full-line consumer electronics brand (not just TV) by quickly communicating the full breadth of products, this was mated with a very successful retail marketing and sales push to Showcase placement of multiple product categories at a large number of big box retail outlets.
1991 The Visionary Todd Rundgren Sees Music and Computer Technology Intersecting Developing CD-I Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | A news report covering Todd Rundgren's plans to develop interactive music which comes out a year later on CD-I.
Todd Rundgren TR I live demos @ the Philips exhibit Chicago CES YouTube Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Todd doing demos of his title in our booth at the June CES in Chicago 1992. He also appeared at a very well attended press conference we held the night before the show.
PhlatLight Its Where Light Is Going YouTube Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | This is a promotional video I had created at Luminus Devices about our company and its technology. We had to pull this together in a very short time because we won the "Gold Component of the Year" Award (along with Sony for OLED and Apple for the iPhone) from the "Society For Information Display" and were set to receive the award at a industry ceremony in Long Beach, CA where the video was used to introduce the company.
Todd Rundgren at The Wiz No World Order Demo 1 2 Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Todd doing entertaining demos of his Interactive CD at NY area retailer The Wiz.
Headline News CES Open to the Public for 1st Time, 1992! YouTube Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Philips is prominently featured in this report
1992 Summer CES Philips Booth Overview Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Here's a brief tour of the 1992 Philips CES booth in Chicago.
1992 Summer CES YouTube Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Philips prominently featured in this news report.
1991 The Visionary Todd Rundgren Sees Music and Computer Technology Intersecting YouTube Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | More of Todd talking about interactive music on a TV interview.
Mid Ohio Can Am 1980 Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Some snippets from qualifying and then the race. The entry list and results are at the following link at OldRacingCars.com oldracingcars.com/canam/results/1981/mid-ohio
HGTV Spot 1995 Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Here's an early HGTV promotional spot we ran to create awareness for the network around the US. We had an extensive campaign to create buzz around the network in cable markets we hadn't penetrated yet and tagged spots to ask viewers to contact their cable provider to carry the network. This consumer pull along with a strong testimonial print campaign in cable industry publications along with other elements helped drive the networks' phenomenal growth.
HGTV EW Scripps Company News 1995 Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-14 | Here's a short excerpt about HGTV from an EW Scripps Company News VHS that was sent to all employees updating us on happenings around the company. I had started as VP of Marketing at the launch of the network in 1995 and that year the network became the fastest growing cable network in history, succeeding in creating 24 hours a day of 100% original programming and selling 100% of our ad time through charter advertising programs with companies like Lowes, Sherwin Williams, Monsanto and Rubbermaid to anchor the network's ad schedule in exchange for value-added benefits we created as incentives for their support.
1976 Six wheel Tyrell Formula One Patrick Depallier Monaco Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-12 | A special double camera set up captures a lap of Monaco driven by French driver Patrick Depallier in the Tyrrell 006 that only did one season in 1976. The body is partially removed to expose the steering rack and front suspension.
Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour 1980 With RCA Colleagues Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-10 | During the two week long 1980 RCA national sales meeting our training department boss treated us to a thrilling helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead. We brought one of the new RCA portable VCR's and cameras and took turns shooting the experience. Besides me was our boss, Ed Milbourn and colleagues Carl Wegener, Paul Vos (RIP) and Kevin Roberts. We had a brief stop during the tour for some Champagne and cheese! The experienced pilot flying a 450 HP Fairchild-Hiller copter with Bauer Helicopters had previously worked as a camera pilot for the film Smokey and The Bandit. Unfortunately we learned a few years later in 84 he and two passengers perished in a Grand Canyon tour accident hitting a juniper tree at 5,000 feet.
Hoover Dam 1980 RCA National Sales Meeting with Paul Vos Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-10 | RCA Product Training colleague Paul Vos (RIP) and I took a quick trip to visit the Hoover Dam and test out some new video gear being introduced at the RCA National Sales Meeting (aka SPP) held in Las Vegas in May at Caesars Palace every year. We were there for two long weeks to train our network of 50 RCA distributors and their sales staff from all over the US and Canada. It's a breathtaking place!
Four Philips CDi TV Spots w DRTV Cybercity & Mozart with BSB Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-10 | Here's Four Philips CDi TV spots including Capture the Experience featuring morphing tech, a companion DRTV derivative which successfully drove people to retail to get demos at events our Philips RSS army ran and two additional 15 second spots, the action game Escape from Cyber City and the spot promoting the educational Mozart disc. These were done with our NY based agency Backer Spielvogel and Bates in 1992 .
Kilby Predicts May 1992 Philips DCC promo Philips Booth Videowall Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-10 | Kilby Predicts - This Philips/Polygram promotional video stars award-winning German Actor Udo Kier (Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and over 200 other films) in a video created by Oscar winner, Steve Golin's Propaganda Films (a Philips/Polygram backed company). I was Philips' VP of Marketing Communications and had a large video wall built to show this film on a loop at the entrance to our booth to promote the launch of the DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) format. The bizarre but fun futuristic film portrayed by Kilby, an interactive character being manipulated by someone off screen as he changes languages, morphs gender and generally does other things as he waxes on eloquently about how you can go to future and take the past with you - promoting DCC's ability to play and record new digital tapes while also able to play your existing analog audio tapes. We also sponsored the world tours of Dire Straits and U2 to promote the format that year.
Philips CDi Todd Rundgren MTV Music News Aug 11, 1993 Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-09 | Todd Rundgren is an outstanding talent well beyond being a great musician and composer but he is also an innovator and pioneer in using computers to create new types of media. He was one of the Philips CD-I developers using cutting edge ideas to create new ways of using the CD and interactivity to create new forms of music which he released on CD-I and was nice enough to help promote his title and therefore the system by appearing at press conferences I developed as VP Interactive Systems for Philips, appeared on TV news segments and made appearances at retail stores to attract crowds and demonstrate his title. He also created a radical solo world tour at the time that I supported by donating a bunch of TV's and engineering assistance so that the TV's could be used as part of the multi-media stage/lightshow.
Oct 92 Philips CDi 60 second TV commercial Capture The Experience Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-09 | We created this ad as part of a campaign called "Capture The Experience" made with our agency Backer Spielvogel and Bates. We were the first outside of Hollywood to use the "Morphing" technology as seen in the July 91 movie Terminator 2 - Judgement Day which was incredibility slow and expensive at the time. The campaign was successful in the sense it triggered a boom in awareness, demand and sales supporting sell through at the "power retail" distribution we relied on to sell the product. We moved in a completely radical (at the time) new advertising direction the following year that produced an explosive 900% + sales growth (we were flying large shipments in for the holidays and into January to meet demand) and recognition with many rewards and copycats.
Philips chip partnership with Motorola for CDi Sep 1994 promotional video Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-09 | This is a portion of a video I appear in by Motorola. The video is promoting their 68000 Power PC chip we used in the CDi Player which is the same processor used in the Apple Macintosh computer at the time.
1980 July Mid Ohio Sportscar Course SCCA Regional & National Races Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-08 | Peter had a great qualifying run in the rain to qualify 3rd, putting him in a good position racing for the first time at the Mid Ohio course. The later National race ended in a crash with two cars wheels coming together launching Peter's car and damaging the suspension when the car came down. The damage is shown at the end.
1980 July Waterford Hills, MI SCCA & Club Races Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-08 | Peter is victorious in his Royale RP24 at Waterford Hills road course.
Bar Harbor ME + White Mountains, NH 1983 Paul Fredrickson 2021-06-03 | One of many New England trips Sally and I took, this one to explore the Arcadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine where we visited The Arcadia Lights lighthouse, natural wonder Thunder Hole, and the White Mountains in New Hampshire viewing Cadillac Mountain, Mount Washington and a very scenic lake.
Kennebunkport New Brunswick & Nova Scotia May 27 1984 Paul Fredrickson 2021-05-31 | Some home video of New England trips by Sally and me in the early 80's to Kennebunkport, ME as well as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Grayling 1980 Allan Motorcycle Paul Fredrickson 2021-05-31 | A visit to our summer cottage in Grayling around 1980 Allan is riding his Suzuki PE175 around and Dad is taking pictures.
Sally & Paul Balloon Ride Oct 1980 Indy Paul Fredrickson 2021-05-31 | My September Birthday present for Sally a few months after we met was a hot air balloon ride near Indianapolis where we lived at the time on a beautiful day in October 1980. We had a potentially eventful balloon landing in a farmer's field when we were greeted by some freaked out/angry cows!
SphereScreen iRacing at Lime Rock Park Porsche 911 RSR Paul Fredrickson 2018-12-16 | An awesome immersive iRacing experience without a VR headset. Drive comfortably for longer sessions. Unified Display's SphereScreen with VR Motion Labs Sim Racing rig December 15, 2018 Boston VR Sim Racers Meetup, Plymouth, MA. using iRacing Multi-Player Simulator Contact us @ www.spherescreen.com Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
SphereScreen Lime Rock Porsche 911 RSR iRacing Lap Paul Fredrickson 2018-12-16 | An awesome immersive iRacing experience without a VR headset. Drive comfortably for longer sessions. Unified Display's SphereScreen with VR Motion Labs Sim Racing rig December 15, 2018 Boston VR Sim Racers Meetup, Plymouth, MA. using iRacing Multi-Player Simulator Contact us @ www.spherescreen.com Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
Sphere Screen Immersive iRacing Watkins Glen Porsche 911 RSR Race Simulator alt view Paul Fredrickson 2018-12-16 | A superior immersive iRacing experience without a VR headset. Drive comfortably for longer sessions. Unified Display's SphereScreen with VR Motion Labs Sim Racing rig December 15, 2016 Sim Racing Meetup, Plymouth, MA. using iRacing Multi-Player Simulator Contact us @ www.spherescreen.com Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
Philips Exhibit 92 Summer CES Paul Fredrickson 2013-06-17 | Philips 92 Chicago CES exhibit I had created to feature the Philips brand in the US on the show floor for the first time. The exhibit was a showcase for the Brand and full AV product line as well as Philips new digital technologies: CD-Interactive, Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) and digital HDTV. Todd Rundgren developed an exciting interactive title which he demonstrated at our booth.
Kilby Predicts (Philips DCC)22 Paul Fredrickson 2013-03-09 | Philips DCC promotional video shown first on a videowall at the CES show Philips booth for the debut of DCC. Created by Propaganda Films
