Spike Lee’s advertising agency, Spike DDB (An Omnicom Company), has entered into a strategic partnered with goldmic.com  in effort to make the hip hop social networking site more brand friendly and offer Spike DDB clients like Pepsi, Turner Networks and Johnson and Johnson a targetted soft landing spot for marketing to the urban online consumer.

“Goldmic.com is about independent expression and creativity. They want to be the source for original hip-hop creations,” said Joel Johnson, managing director, of New York based Spike DDB.”We want to find the appropriate advertisers who will respect that mission. We are looking for clients and advertising who understand the power and influence of hip-hop.”"What we’re trying to do is offer hip hop fans a new way to release their new creations. Spike DDB is going to present us to some brands and partners to help us monetize our traffic,” said David Lemoine, managing partner, goldmic.com. “We want our members to be as free as possible within certain limits.”  Those limits specifically include the use of a moderator who regularly zaps profanity laced commentary from the site in effort to make it more Madison Ave friendly.

I’m somewhat surprised by the deal.  Spike DDB for the most part is a visual (Television) ad company as part of a joint venture with DDB Needham a full-service ad agency.  No terms were disclosed by the source, Billboard.biz but I would have to assume there is either a close personal relationship being exploited or a large monetary transaction taking place.  I’ve never been a visitor of GoldMic.com and perhaps this is the result of there securing some venture capital to be able to leverage this deal.  I’m not overly optimistic but I will keep an eye on it.