At first glance, getting drunk on a couch with two guys named Alex and Kevin may not be the most traditional avenue in which to promote the impending launch of your late night talk show.
But Jimmy Fallon isn’t exactly your traditional late night talk show host.
Especially when one takes a closer look at the path he has chosen to promote the March 2nd launch of LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON.
For those two drunks who once a week carve out an hour of their busy schedule to sit on a couch, drink beer and shoot the, well you know… just so happen to be Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose, the hosts of the insanely popular online weekly video show Diggnation.
Diggnation chronicles the most buzzed about stories on the social news web site digg.com. And more importantly, with an average audience of 200,000 tech savvy 18-34 year olds, is comprised of a demographic that network executives and media buyers only dream about.
Now, here’s where Fallon proves that he’s a heck of a lot than the actor who once thought co-starring in a movie called FEVER PITCH with Drew Barrymore was a good idea.
Remember those 200,00 fans we just mentioned? They’re not so much passive viewers, as ravenous fanboys of everything Albrecht and Rose. Be it domain names (godaddy.com), online services (netflix.com) or even tea ($100,000 worth dollars worth, according to to Adagio tea co-founder Michael Cramer) virtually everything Alex and Kevin touch, promote, or mention on the show turns to gold. And last week, on a very special episode of Diggnation, guest host Jimmy Fallon earned Alex and Kevin’s seal of approval (see flickr photos) while simultaneously garnering himself 16,000 twitter followers and a legion of new fans.
Clearly Fallon gets it.
Rather than risk the rocky start and uphill battle that Conan O’Brien faced, where legend has it everyone except the chatfest host knew he was existing on the verge of cancellation. Fallon isn’t waiting until his show’s March 2nd premiere to build an audience; Or as it’s more commonly referred to in the online world, a community.
Since early December, Fallon has been releasing daily videos on latenightwithjimmyfallon.com, answering fan questions, introducing the writers and essentially taking fans behind the scenes of the work-in-progress that will be his show. Then there’s the fact that during last week’s whirl-wind press tour, the guy took the world’s largest Consumer Electronics Show (CES) by storm, getting both jiggy and geeky with the popular electronics blog Engadget.com and appearing on G4’s ATTACK OF THE SHOW. Add all that up, and one would be hard-pressed to find fault in Fallon’s early strategy for what we’re going to dub Late Night Version 2.0.
Now all that’s left is for Fallon to be, well, funny.
Stay tuned… 