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Yahoo! Gets Ram Tough, Partners With Chrysler's Truck Brand on Country Music Portal

Dodge Ram

Yahoo is going deep into country music and branded media in its newly launched Ram Country on Yahoo! Music. This is the first time the portal has created a dedicated country music site. Chrysler's Ram Truck brand is the sole sponsor, and the company says this is the largest online initiative it has deployed yet.

The site is more than a collection of country music videos. It is a genuine portal onto the country music scene. The "Our Country Blog" pipes in running concert and celebrity items along with news, musician news, photo galleries, and event footage. The site is fully programmed, including ongoing features like "Going Home," a reality series featuring a country music artists returning to hos or her roots. Artists will perform at the Ram Country Studio. And Music With a View will feature acoustic renditions. A day in the life of a country star is featured in Another side of. We particularly like the Country Covers series, which has a current star cover a classic from the country catalog.

The Ram Truck integration is massive and apparent on every level of the site. Virtually all of the content buckets carry the Ram moniker in some way. The site design carries the Ram logo, a prominent rich media ad unit in the upper right corner and a banner that leads to a "Ram Rocks" landing page. Ram clearly is itself as deep into the spirit of this integration as Yahoo!. The sponsor site emphasized the truck as the tool of the working class roadie that "carries the show."

In a statement, Ram Truck Brand President and CEO Fred Diaz says that the brand has been trying to better understand its customer base and find ways of communicating more directly with it. "Through our partnership with Yahoo!, the Ram Truck brand will be able to use the web site as a vehicle to define and communicate the Ram Truck lifestyle as well as deliver information and messages about our products."

Yahoo! Music says that the Ram Country project embodies the next generation of music-themed branded entertainment sites. In the past Yahoo! Has also partnered with Pepsi on its youth-oriented Pepsi Smash!.

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