NYTimes Conversations

Across a slowly growing number of blogs and online video sites, celebrities can be found making unscripted conversation about NYTimes.com features they cannot live without.

The effort, New York Times Conversations, is part of a multimedia campaign to boost awareness of NYTimes.com. Orchestrated with help from agency Your Majesty, brand evangelists include Kenneth Cole, Padma Lakshmi, John Leguizamo, John Cameron Mitchell, Isaac Mizrahi, Bebe Neuwirth, Cynthia Nixon, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Lynn Redgrave, Eric Ripert, Ben Stein and Justin Tuck.

And while many of these people are household names, the tone of the videos is intentionally lax, conveying a calculatedly authentic "testimonial" feel.

"I'm a total theatre junkie, so I like to go on NYTimes.com," testifies Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon, perched on a director's chair. "If they're interviewing, say, a director who's directed a play, you can go on the website and actually watch an interview." Thereafter she slips into a casual digression about Xanadu with a person off-camera.

Actor John Leguizamo shadowboxes while preaching the news site's gospel. "I do go on The New York Times and I check out the real estate. I'm just curious to see what people got on the market, what they're trying to get away with. And the global stuff! All the global warming, Obama…"

The scene changes abruptly to depict Leguizamo, still in his boxing gloves, reading NYTimes.com material out loud from a laptop monitor.

A full-page ad in The New York Times newspaper announced the debut of Conversations on Tuesday. It is also promoted on Facebook.

The Conversations YouTube channel currently features 12 vignettes, but SVP-Marketing/Circulation Yasmin Namini of The New York Times stated more would come soon.

According to Namini, the Times "cast a wide net" to spear celebs for the campaign. "We sent out about 100 or so letters to various celebrities in all different walks of life. These 12 were among those that responded."

Social networks and blogs will be strategically targeted. "The public relations department has a considerable contact list with influential bloggers," boasted Soraya Darabi, who manages partnership and buzz marketing.

"Ideally, these videos will be promoted elsewhere off of our channel."

Each piece was unscripted, and as a result the famous personalities were often vague about where viewers could locate the Times features they so favor. Accounting for this, videos are accompanied by a drop-down menu that lets users explore the material being discussed, reports ClickZ.

Conversations represents the NYT's ongoing attempts to position itself as a go-to online news source that plays well with casual online communities. The company recently launched Times Extra, which buttresses leading stories with links to third-party content, including blogs. And over the course of the Presidential election, it ran an aggressive online campaign intended to improve its Facebook Fan figures.

These activities suggest The New York Times increasingly perceives its future lies in web-based, community-controlled media as opposed to print — and not without reason, for the flagship business model is losing momentum: It recently hired a real estate firm to help obtain a mortgage against its headquarters in New York.