Honeyshed's Back With A Brand New Track

Honeyshed, the QVC 's MTV experiment bankrolled by Publicis and dreamed up by Droga5, took a lot of heat upon its first outing on the web. They went dark for a while only to officially re-open their flash based doors a day ago.

During my last few weeks at Digitas, I worked on the Honeyshed business. Part of the reason as to why I agreed to help out had a tremendous amount to do with my relationship with their current CEO, Steve Greifer who I consider a good friend. I also, sinfully admit, I liked the concept.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to work on the project for very long.

As I told Steve, I think the new rollout is a considerable improvement over the first iteration of Honeyshed.

But will it turn heads? I've thought a lot about whether or not the concept will succeed - Greg Verdino had a great point regarding how success will be dictated by number of sponsors, which will ultimately be decided by uniques and time spent on site.

They have a shot.

I believe we'll all know what the outlook for Honeyshed is going to be once they role out their media plan. Articles like these are a bit discouraging though:

Online Video, Where's The Money?

For the detractors. The ones who say the girls are too whoreish, the guys aren't authentic, etc. I don't think Honeyshed is losing sleep over you. In fact, I believe the more offensive your comments, the greater the curiosity will peak in their audience. And speaking of audience, I ask you to walk into a Hot Topic store. Those same faces you see on Honeyshed you'll see in the real world perusing the aisles for hoodies.

Are they buying $250.00 shoes? Um probably not. But keep in mind Honeyshed is intertwining aspirational products with in-reach goods.

Ultimately however I think product features will be dictated by audience demand. There's a lot of theater in their approach and it's purposely done but if they want to scale, Honeyshed is going to be reliant on consumer participation.

I sincerely wish them the best of luck.