ay!
Smart Marketers Tap Next Generation Consumers
MasterCard, MBNA, Microsoft, Infoseek, iMALL, CommTouch, Women.com,
Rough Guides, CBS SportsLine, Daily Variety, Tribune Media and USA Today
08/25/98 -- UNIVERSAL CITY, CA. -- According to a Spring 1998 unaided study
completed by Student Monitor (smcinc.com/monitor), college students chose the
Internet as #1 when asked what was the most popular pastime on their campuses.
Since Student Monitor began conducting the study in 1988, beer drinking always sat in
the #1 slotuntil now! Enter, animalhouse.com, located at www.animalhouse.com, and
created in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the cult classic Animal House.
Animalhouse.com, the quintessential online college community is slated to launch for
back-to-school this September. While much of the sites content comes from the
grassroots involvement of college students, animalhouse.com is rich with content and
service partners including smart youth marketers: iMALL, MasterCard, Microsoft,
Infoseek, CommTouch, Rough Guides, Women.com, CBS SportsLine, Daily Variety,
Tribune Media and USA Today.
Since its inception, customized sites have been built at animalhouse.com for more than
800 colleges and universities serving as a one-stop-spot for students to catch up on
current events, get a job, chat, shop, build communities, do research, construct Web
sites -- in other words, a place to get a life.
The 18-25 demographic is historically difficult and costly to reach because of the
inability to communicate through traditional media, says animalhouse.com president Jay
Samit. With purchasing and branding patterns solidified by age 25, animalhouse.com
presents the perfect opportunity for marketers to target college students directly
through relevant marketing and advertising.
SITE FEATURES
Shopping Mall (local & national stores)
Free e-mail (buddy lists)
Chat Rooms (voice-to-voice/video-to-video)
Free Web Pages
World News (USA Today, Tribune Media)
Entertainment News (Daily Variety)
Sports Stats and News (CBS SportsLine)
Free Classifieds
Job Boards and Resume Builder
Movie Reviews by Gene Siskel
Local News from U.S. Campuses
Local Hangout and Event Information
Online Games
Doctors Advice
Travel Information (Rough Guides)
Carpool Boards and Weather
Horoscopes
Financial Aid/Scholarship Info.
Local Television and Movie Schedules
Streaming College Radio Stations
Local Restaurant Ratings
Housing Information
Course Evaluations from Peers
And Much More
iMALL and MasterCard provide shopping beyond the university bookstore
In order to cater to students shopping online, animalhouse.com collaborated with
Master Card and iMALL to provide Web shopping with ease. iMALL (imall.com) is the
exclusive proprietor of the animalhouse.com online store and will handle all
merchandising, order processing and fulfillment. As part of the partnership, iMALL will
build online malls for college towns all over the United States allowing local and national
merchants to sell their goods and services directly to students online. With iMALLs
technology, these local merchants will be able to use their standard browser to build an
entire online storefront in a matter of minutes from a variety of store layouts, ranging
from simple Brochure SITES to a fully secure commerce-enabled Web site.
In order for a store to be admitted into our iMALL, its goods must be the least
expensive on the net or have a value-added feature, said Samit. This way we can
assure our members that they are getting the best deal anywhere.
CommTouch keeps students in toucheven on holiday breaks and summer vacation
Animalhouse.com enables students, who spend most of their time away from campus
during breaks, to stay in touch with free email through CommTouch. With a free
animalhouse.com email account, students can check their email from any computer that
is connected to the Internet, whether they are at home, at a library, in a cyber cafe or
on the road. The CommTouch service offers many unique features including safety
controls, spam blockers and the ability to forward messages from any other email
account to the students animalhouse.com free email account.
When building an online community, free email is imperative, said Samit. CommTouch
was the only reliable email provider that could respond in Internet time to our need for a
service that mirrored our distinctive look and feel.
Rough Guides and Headland serve as the animalhouse.com travel advisor
Rough Guides and Headland designed and built a co-branded site that contains
exclusive customized content geared toward animalhouse.coms college audience. From
the Road Trip link on the animalhouse.com home page, visitors will have access to
in-depth, opinionated information on more than 4,000 destinations around the world.
This area will aid students in all their travel planning venturesfrom spending a semester
abroad to taking a road trip across the country, Rough Guides acts as their virtual
travel companion!
Create a world outside the classroom with free Web authoring tools
Animalhouse.com members can build their own Web page, no rent due!
animalhouse.com offers hundreds of templates, graphics, fonts and cutting-edge
software providing easy site building tools without the need to be HTML savvy!
Content to keep students in the loop and on the cutting edge
To keep up with current events, discuss issues, check on the odds of an upcoming
game or ask certified physicians for medical advice, content is provided by
Women.com, USA Today, Tribune Media, CBS SportsLine and Daily Variety. Whatever
a starving student is looking for can be found on the animalhouse.com site using a
version of Infoseeks search technology, Ultraseek Server, the exclusive search engine
of the site.
About animalhouse.com
Slated to launch back-to-school in September 1998, animalhouse.com is the
quintessential online community designed to meet the cultural, social and educational
needs of college students. The site offers insider information on campus life with more
than 50 percent of the content created and continually updated by students across the
country at more than 680 colleges and universities.
Other added features include free e-mail through CommTouch, online shopping mall
with exclusive-to-animalhouse.com discounts through iMALL, travel information from
Rough Guides, content from USA Today, CBS SportsLine, Tribune Media, Daily Variety
and Women.com, with search capabilities provided by Infoseek and software provided
by Microsoft.
About Student Monitor
STUDENT MONITOR is the only nationally syndicated, market research study of the
college student market. Published as a comprehensive, student market research
portfolio, STUDENT MONITOR is specifically designed to achieve a companys sales
and marketing objectives with this key, consumer segment. Twice each year, Student
Monitor interviews students, attending colleges and universities throughout the country,
providing critical insight to what students are thinking, planning and buying. The tested
Student Monitor methodology provides for national student representation by school
type, enrollment size, and geographic area. For more information and the complete
Spring 1998 Student Monitor market research portfolio, please contact Eric Weil at
201-612-8100 or at weil@smcinc.com.
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