Fall TV season is right! around! the corner!, which means the campaigns for new shows are getting into gear, and as usual, network marketing big cheeses are coming up with unusual ways to promote their series. Exhibit A: The campaign for the Courteney Cox-led Cougar Town is including faux ads for Cox’s character’s real estate agency. (Similar signs are a plot point in the pilot episode, too. Synergy, you guys!) The ads will run on benches and bus stops like ordinary real estate spots, which is a cute idea, I guess, except I only ever notice those signs when the agent’s photo makes me chuckle. Why would you pick the photo where you have serial killer face?! etc.

According to an ABC marketing executive, “It’s important to us that we position [the show] in the right way. We don’t want people to think that she’s purely a predator. We want people to know that this is a comedy, and that Courteney is playing a professional woman who is a fun and likable character.”

I have high hopes for the series, based on how much I liked the pilot and how devoted I am to Bill Lawrence (a lot on both counts), and I know it’s too late to change the show’s title, but man, if your marketing team has to make sure people don’t think your lead character is a “predator,” that seems like an uphill battle. Isn’t it passe already to call someone a “cougar”? It’s like using the term “metrosexual.” Blech. I know it’s a joke — the town’s sports teams are the Cougars — but it’s hard to see the word “cougar” as anything other than derogatory and objectifying, which conflicts with the show’s congenial silliness. Lawrence and Co. swore at the TCA press tour that Cox’s character wouldn’t be entertaining new suitors every week, so the relationship-specific moniker seems like an even worse idea.

What do you think, PopWatchers? Does the name “Cougar Town” bug you, or could this ad campaign convince you to give it a whirl?

Source: popwatch

Courteney Cox says that “40 is the new 20? in a series of ads promoting her return to US TV in the comedy Cougar Town.

The married mother-of-one wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the motto.

The 45-year-old former Friends star is re-launching her TV career with the sitcom - which she also co-produces with her real-life husband David Arquette - about a divorcée in her 40s on the hunt for younger men.

The show is due to premiere on the ABC network, on 23 September.

Arquette and Cox are set to team up in the film Scream 4 - the next instalment of the horror series on which they first met and fell in love.

Source: www.newchatter.com

With a title like “Cougar Town,” a marketer could go nuts with double entendres and risque inferences in the promo campaign for the show.

But ABC is getting crafty with its tubthumping for the Courteney Cox starrer in a way that it hopes will signal that Cox’s character, real estate agent Jules Cobb, is more than just a man-hungry woman of a certain age.

ABC’s marketing team has created mock outdoor advertising materials for Jules Cobb Real Estate (“serving the greater Cougar Town area”) that will run in key markets in spots where local real estate advertising is often found — think bus sides, bus benches and grocery carts. They’re working on a website that will continue the mock agency theme, and they’re planning wrap-around covers for magazines including In Touch and Star, among other initiatives.

“Even though the audience hasn’t seen the show, we knew we could have fun with the idea of turning Courteney Cox into a real estate agent,” said Michael Benson, co-exec veep of marketing for ABC Entertainment Group. “We want it to create some buzz and get people talking about the show” prior to its Sept. 23 bow.

Although the campaign will run in only a handful of big markets, ABC is counting on fans and the Internet to help spread the word.

“It’s important to us that we position (‘Cougar Town’) the right way,” Benson said. “We don’t want people to think that she’s purely a predator. We want people to know that this is a comedy, and that Courteney is playing a professional woman who is a fun and likable character.”

Earlier this week, Courteney talked about the possibility that BFF Jennifer Aniston will guest star on Cougar Town. (Aniston has her own romantic comedy coming out called Pumas, the story of two 30-something women on the prowl for younger men, while Courteney’s new series is about a 40-something woman dating younger men.)

Cox said at the recent TCA press conference, “I did know about her movie. I’m not sure exactly what the storyline is other than it’s probably a woman. And I guess pumas are in their 30s. Isn’t that right? Pumas are in their 30s? Jaguars are in their 50s, and saber-tooths go right into the 60s.”

She added, “You know, she’s a good friend and I know she loves the show. I’m not going to say she is [going to do it] because I don’t know. [But if producer Bill Lawrence] writes her a character, I’m sure she’ll be glad to do it.”

Cougar Town premieres @ 9:30PM ET/PT on Wednesday (September 23) on ABC.

Gallery Link – Cougar Town – Season 1- On The Set, August 13 2009

Source: justjared

Whatever the Chinese calendar says, this could turn out to be the year of the cougar on American television.

A “cougar,” for those who have been hibernating, is a middle-aged woman either prowling for or finding herself involved with a measurably younger man.

Television did a test run last season with TV Land’s painful “reality” show “The Cougar.” This year, praise the Lord, cougars have moved into the more comfortable den of scripted comedy – led by ABC’s “Cougar Town,” a sitcom that debuts Sept. 23 with Courteney Cox as the cougar.

Cox practically purred this weekend when she talked to TV writers about the show – noting she’s seven years older than her real-life husband David Arquette.

“I’ve been blazing that trail for years,” she said. “I think it’s great to be a cougar.”

This fall, she won’t be prowling alone.

Laura Leighton’s Sydney Andrews, returning to the CW’s revived “Melrose Place,” immediately moves in on the young. Rebecca Romijn’s Roxie on ABC’s new “Eastwick” starts off with a young fellow, and Susan Ward’s Chloe Kmetko on ABC Family’s “Make It or Break It” tries to pass herself off as her teenage daughter’s sister.

Equally revealing, “cougar” is now casual TV banter. On the season premiere of “Flipping Out,” Jeff Lewis calls his divorced assisstant Jenni a “cougar” even when she protests she’s 36, not 40.

Cox turned 45 in June, and she opens “Cougar Town” with a shower scene where she inventories her body, dislikes everything and concludes she’s starting to resemble a farm animal.

Sure. And chocolate mousse tastes like peat moss and Lamborghinis drive like lawn mowers.

Cox disproves her own point minutes later with a lingerie scene that would make the cast of “Gossip Girl” gasp.

But the deeper point of the opening scene, suggested Cox, is to reinforce how turning 40 unleashes a lot of self-doubt for real-life women.

“It’s hard,” she said. “It would be really scary if I wasn’t married and I had to go back out there again.”

By that premise, a cougar is simply a woman who has decided to defy destiny and maybe enjoy a little turnabout.

The exotic fascination of the older woman-younger man is hardly new, of course, predating even Mrs. Robinson. Eva Longoria’s Gaby was not the first bored housewife to covet the pool boy.

The most succinct summation came years ago on “Ed Sullivan” from a somewhat less likely cougar, the late great Moms Mabley.

“The only thing an old man can give me,” she said, “is the phone number of a young man.”

But for the “cougar” concept to work as a weekly show, said Bill Lawrence, “Cougar Town’s” executive producer, it can’t be just a wink-wink, nudge-nudge one-liner.

“If every week this show were about what young man is Courteney going to sleep with,” he said, “that’s the Samantha from ‘Sex and the City’ show, and I don’t think people would respond.”

The heart of “Cougar Town,” he said, is how a divorced middle-aged woman puts her life back together – and why it’s harder for her than for her divorced middle-aged husband.

“Because,” said Lawrence, “it is ultimately still a sexist and misogynistic society.”

Source: www.nydailynews.com

Another new promo for ABC’s fall shows has been released view it below.

Courteney Cox took the stage today at the TCAs in Pasadena to promote Cougar Town as we twittered the highlights. Courteney looked fantastic in her leather skirt while she, her costars, and executive producer Bill Lawrence kept the crowd laughing with tons of jokes. Of course, Courteney was asked about Jennifer Aniston.

First Court joked about Jennifer Aniston’s similar-sounding Pumas joking, “Yeah, she totally ripped it off! I did know about her movie, but I’m not sure exactly what the story is. I guess Pumas are in their 30s. Jaguars are 50s, and sabertooths go right into the ’60s?”

Then it was Lawrence himself who chimed in, “Is Jennifer going to be on the show?” to which Courtney responded, “She’s a good friend and I know she loves the show. If Bill writes her a character, I’m sure she’ll do it.”

I posted yesturday about ABC’s new fall promos and shows. Below you can view the new ABC promo starring Courteney and Josh Holloway. Credits to Lost-abc.ru for this video. It does have subtitles.

An imaginative campaign from ABC to promote its series for the 2009-10 season is being expanded.

The campaign, which began in May, is centered on the fanciful notion that the stars of all the shows broadcast by ABC live together in a house as one big happy family. Think of it as sort of a marketing spin on “Big Brother.” (Video below.)

The commercials that have appeared so far have been general in nature, featuring ABC stars like Sally Field (“Brothers and Sisters”), Teri Hatcher (“Desperate Housewives”), Matthew Fox (“Lost”) and the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. New spots that are to begin running on Saturday, which will be available in longer versions next week on abc.com, will promote four new sitcoms that are to make their debuts on Wednesdays in the fall.

The new Wednesday series touted in the commercials are “Hank,” starring Kelsey Grammer; “The Middle,” starring Patricia Heaton; “Modern Family,” with an ensemble cast that includes Ed O’Neill; and “Cougartown,” with Courteney Cox. They are to appear from 8 to 10 on Wednesday nights.

The vignettes in the commercials include Calista Flockhart of “Brothers and Sisters” welcoming Mr. Grammer to the ABC house and showing him to his room. He offers her a tip; she tells him she is not a maid. Also, Josh Holloway of “Lost” and Ms. Cox exchange ripostes at a barbecue. And some of the newcomers are pressed into doing laundry for the casts of established ABC series like “Dancing With the Stars” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

“We started with the people who are very familiar faces,” said Marla Provencio, co-executive vice president for marketing at ABC with Mike Benson. Now the idea is to use the premise of the ABC house to “introduce our new Wednesday comedy line-up,” she added.

Heads up for you guys.. Courteney will be attending the TCA Press Tour 2009 this Saturday for her new show Cougar Town! Be sure to check back here at Courteney Online saturday/sunday for full coverage!