Warner Bros. Jumps on IM Promotion Train

Looking to drum up fan interest for its newest teenage act, Warner Bros. Records has jumped on the instant messaging promotion train, announcing a deal with Silicon Alley start-up ActiveBuddy, Inc. to unleash the LindsayBuddy IM “bot.”

The alliance with Warner Bros. gets ActiveBuddy’s technology through the doors of one of the biggest names in the entertainment industry and lends credibility to its concept of using IM interactive buddies as a marketing/promotion too.

It comes just a few months after a similar deal with Capitol Records to create the GooglyMinotaur buddy to help push Radiohead’s Amnesiac album.

The newest buddy, which will be available on AOL’s AIM platform, will be used to tout the debut album from 14-year-old pop singer Lindsay Pagano and, more importantly, push IM users to e-commerce Web sites hawking the CD.

Pagano, a familiar face and voice from the long-running “All I need…” AOL television commercials, is due to release her first album – titled Love&Faith&Inspiration — on October 23 and ActiveBuddy said the IM “bot” would remain live for the next two months.

LindsayBuddy can be added to AIM buddy lists to allow users to initiate a two-way conversation to request information about the singer and links to her music and videos. “The Lindsay Pagano agent is the only provider of exclusive Lindsay Pagano information and music through instant messaging,” the companies said.

The interactive “bot” can recognize and respond to millions of patterns of natural-language queries on the Lindsay Pagano promotion with more than 4,000 matching phrases pre-programmed into the buddy script that powers the IM interaction.

“ActiveBuddy’s interactive agents are compelling yet simple and fast means of learning about new artists like Lindsay,” said Betty Lin, Senior Manager of new media for Warner Bros.

“Lindsay is an IM fan and user herself, so it makes sense to have her interact with her new fans through this medium.”

Content delivered through LindsayBuddy has been generated primarily from the Warner Bros. Web site and includes information like album tracks, videos, photos and musical postcards. Additional entertainment related content, including movie times, entertainment news, and horoscopes is also offered.

Other publicly available agents from ActiveBuddy include SmarterChild, which provides news, weather forecasts, reference tools financial data, movie times, horoscopes and games.