Software, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie AOL 9.0 Optimized: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This promotional CD features The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie for America Online version 9.0 Optimized. The CD features a orange background with the tracing of underwater flowers common to the series along with the logo of the movie. A free SpongeBob game is on the CD. It also advertises the release date of the movie: November 26th, 2004 along with the website: SpongeBobMovie.com. The CD promo offers 1099 hours free for 50 days.

In 1993, America Online under the direction of Jan Brandt initated a direct marketing campaign that distributed floppy disks then CDs through various mechanism to get people to try out the internet service. The early success of the campaign led to expanding the ways of reaching people not just by direct mail, but including them with magazines, promotional materials at stores like Blockbusters, and other methods. The introduction of CDs made production significantly cheaper contributing the explosion. Jan Brandt on Quora states that at one point 50% of the CDs produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it. This campaign went on for years and led to the creation of a variety of discs to appeal to individuals to try online services.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 2004
• maker: America Online, Inc.
• Object Name: promotional disc
• Object Type: compact discs
• Object Type: software
• Physical Description: plastic (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 1/16 in x 4 3/4 in; .15875 cm x 12.065 cm
• ID Number: 2016.3019.15
• model number: AM1204R130
• catalog number: 2016.3019.15
• nonaccession number: 2016.3019
• Credit Line: Gift of Kathryn Eberhart
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.