• by Aaron Baar , March 6, 2009

Jonesing for that interview Nina Blackwood did with A-ha? Or perhaps just wanting to check on Mark Goodman's hairstyle? AT&T has got you covered.

The company has partnered with MTV to showcase older clips from MTV Networks' "Vault," video content that had not been available over the Internet for decades. AT&T's brand positioning as a company that helps people make connections gave the tie-in some logic, says Jason Witt, general manager at MTVN's Digital Fusion. "AT&T provides the perfect metaphor for content people have seen or haven't seen for years," Witt tells Marketing Daily.

"It gives us the opportunity to leverage the strength of MTV and what they do best--music--and convert that to a value for our customer," adds Chris Schembri, vice president of media services for AT&T.

The heart of the promotion is a trivia game--accessed either through a dedicated AT&T site or via one of MTV Networks' portfolio of sites (including MTV.com, VH1.com and CMT.com). The game features 18,000 questions across five music genres, which match up with the video the user has opted to play from the site. (A user viewing a Kanye West video, for instance, would get questions about Hip Hop.) The trivia game itself is branded as an AT&T-sponsored product, and the content is showcased as "unlocked by AT&T."

"We're unlocking content that might not be otherwise available to them," Schembri says. "It gives them an opportunity to engage with our brand in a way that's more than clicking on a banner ad."

Once inside the "Vault," users can answer more trivia questions that will allow them to "preview" content to be released the next day, or they can forward the site to a friend or embed it on social networks or blogs to help the promotion spread virally, Witt says. "The content is designed to be sharable," he says.

The company will also reach out to bloggers and other fan communities that might be interested in the content, Witt says. "It's one thing to say [to the general public], 'It's all here'," he says. "It's another to tell the 12 biggest Kiss sites that we have the original video of them taking their makeup off, and it's not some grainy content someone transferred from a videotape."

Content to be unlocked over the promotion, which runs until May, will include videos and past exclusive performances, as well as interviews and backstage antics from MTV, VH1 and Country Music Television. The promotion will unlock 15 clips a day, with an attempt to span music genres and demographics, from The Jonas Brothers to Kiss. "You're talking about decades of coverage," Witt says. "We try to cross genres and time."