Products Slide Into More TV Shows, With Help From New Middlemen
By EVELYN NUSSENBAUM
6 September 2004
Leslie Moonves loves to talk about the Steven Spielberg movie "Minority Report." Mr. Moonves, the co-president and co-chief operating officer of Viacom, which owns CBS, Paramount Television and Showtime, still sings the praises of the movie two years after he saw it. But it was not the cinematography or Tom Cruise's star turn that moved him. It was all the brand names -- Lexus, Gap, Reebok, Guinness and American Express -- that found their way into the film.
"That movie was packed with brands," he said. "I sat in the movie theater and thought A, the movie's working, and B, if Spielberg can do it without compromising the artistry, we can, too."
Television networks have worked hard in the last two years to strike their own Product Placement deals, closing the gap with the movies. CBS plans to broadcast product-themed nights, with a single brand featured on consecutive shows, although Mr. Moonves declined to offer details. Entire episodes of NBC's "The Apprentice" will revolve around one brand: instead of selling lemonade or giving rickshaw rides, the aspiring business tycoons will sell Mars's newest candy bar, hawk Crest toothpaste and construct a new toy for Mattel. Campbell's Soup has been written into "American Dreams," with NBC and the soup maker sponsoring a real-life essay contest mirroring one in the show's plot.
The new emphasis on Product Placement in television has brought new players into the business -- brand wranglers who work with programmers and marketers. They are pushing the placement, which they like to call "Product Placement," into new territory, sometimes acting as co-producers and even building new programming around the brands.
"There's been a gold rush that reminds me of the Internet 10 years ago," said Scott Donaton, editor of Advertising Age and the author of "Madison & Vine," a book about the convergence of the entertainment and advertising industries. "Many went to the marketers and said, 'You can't handle Hollywood. Let me do it for you.' Then they went to the networks and promised to handle the marketers."
Some of the new integrators are traditional Product Placement firms, while others are advertising agencies that have started entertainment divisions. New companies devoted to product integration have also popped up. All see the chance to profit from the growing closeness between programmers and marketers, who have been forced to band together to counter falling ratings, a fragmented audience and new technology like digital video recorders that allow viewers to skip traditional commercials altogether.
Madison Road Entertainment, which calls itself an independent, advertiser-driven television studio, is one of the newest players. The two-year-old Los Angeles company was created by Tom Mazza, the former president of Columbia TriStar Television; Jak Severson, a longtime marketing executive; and Rob Long, a former writer for "Cheers." The company worked on some of this season's highest-profile product integration deals -- for example, helping bring Levi's, Crest and Mars to the "The Apprentice." Madison Road also struck a deal to brand the photo shoots that cap episodes of UPN's "America's Next Top Model," and its executives said they had a deal in the works for the Fox Network's "Bernie Mac" show.
But the small company is hunting much bigger game. Madison Road is aiming to create what programmers and marketers call branded entertainment, working products into the fabric of a show from the start of its development.
"The best way to bridge these two worlds, who often speak very different languages, is to come in at the very beginning of the creative process," the president of the company, Mr. Mazza, said. He said a cable channel had ordered a pilot for a branded show created by Madison Road, and that six others were in development. He would not discuss details.
Alliance, the Product Placement arm of the advertising company Grey Global, is moving aggressively into the product integration business. Its chief executive, Jarrod Moses, recently brokered a deal for the Hasbro game "Operation" game to be written into NBC's medical show "Scrubs." Now he is pushing the company further.
"My clients are now asking me to be present in the development process with the brands," he said. "They've got to be at the drafting desk of some of these producers, so they can start thinking about ways to create around the character of the brand."
Mindshare, the media buying company owned by the WPP Group, has gone right into the production business. This summer it co-produced the family drama "The Days" with ABC, splitting ownership and commercial rights. Mindshare then sold its share of the commercial time and placement opportunities to longtime clients like Unilever. The Omnicom Group, the advertising conglomerate, has hired Robert Riesenberg, an executive producer of the reality show "The Restaurant," to run its branded entertainment unit. And MPG, the media buying unit of the French ad firm Havas, recently hired two journalists from Advertising Age to start its entertainment business.
There is, of course, no guarantee that these middlemen will be successful. Nobody knows whether audiences will watch branded entertainment, or, if they do, that it will move them to buy the products they see. A recent study by the research firm Media-edge:cia, a unit of WPP, found that viewers from 15 to 34 are the most accepting of Product Placement and are more likely than other viewers to try brands they have noticed on television.
It is also tricky to measure the success of product integration if there is no immediate, significant bump in sales after the program is broadcast. Nielsen Media Research recently introduced a service called Place*Views, which monitors where, how many times and for how long a brand is featured on television, along with the size of the audience. A placement firm called iTVX has developed a system that it says actually measures the return on investment of paid placement, using measurements that include the cost per second of a commercial during the same period.
Even if branded entertainment has legs, the middlemen face another risk; they could get pushed aside if the programmers and marketers figure out how to collaborate on their own.
Pepsico, for example, is starting to develop its own branded programming. The company worked with Joel Gallen, producer of the Video Music Awards on MTV, to produce its "Pepsi Smash" televised concert series featuring performers like Avril Lavigne on the WB Network this year. Pepsico was so pleased with the results that it plans to try other kinds of shows.
Some say that what could ultimately limit branded entertainment, and the prospects of those promoting it, is the marketers' ability to tolerate the vagaries of the entertainment business.
"Not everyone will want to be in the position of owning these things and worrying about how a movie or television show performed," Mr. Donaton said.
That might be bad for the middlemen. But it could be a great relief to viewers who are already suffering from ad fatigue.
Even Mark Burnett, the creator of "Survivor" and "The Apprentice" and a Product Placement impresario himself, says that integration has his limits.
"I think it's insane to try and create a show around a brand," he said. "I only make shows I'm interested in. Then, with the right environment, you can have 30 placements and the audience won't care."
This Song Is Brought to You by...
Television is not the only fertile ground for Product Placement. Record executives, plagued by falling sales and online piracy, are trying to blend brands with music. For instance, Remy Red, a fruit and cognac mix from Remy Martin, is sponsoring Angie Stone's summer concert tour, where she has been performing her song "Remy Red."
Last summer, Jewel performed her song "Intuition" at a concert sponsored by Schick -- which had a new razor with the same name. And the rapper Ms. Jade drove a Hummer in her "Ching Ching" video; General Motors paid $300,000 for that placement. Jarrod Moses, the chief executive of Alliance (the Product Placement arm of the marketing firm Grey Global), negotiated the razor deal. "The music business is looking at brands, they're looking at television, and they're saying, 'Help me,"' he said.
Next week, Mr. Moses will oblige, throwing a conference to match up music and brand executives. Jason Flom, the chairman of Atlantic Records, is attending, and Mr. Moses says executives from the other major labels will come as well. "The music executives are going to speak in front of 300 brand directors to show them their wares," he said. "What you'll see for the first time is brands planning integration with musicians."
Certainly, brands have benefited from being included in songs and videos. "Pass the Courvoisier" by Busta Rhymes bolstered sales of the cognac, according to Allied Domecq, but Mr. Rhymes swears the company did not pay him.
The biggest obstacle is MTV. The network has banned explicit Product Placement in videos, fearing that it would dilute the power of its marketers. That restriction forces dealmakers to be more imaginative. Mark Humphrey, whose company, Band Ad, links musicians and marketers, struck a deal between Sheryl Crow and American Express: for Ms. Crow's song "Soak up the Sun," American Express licensed the music and created a 30-second commercial with content from the video.
Mr. Humphrey sees a future in branded music videos similar to the plans for TV. He wants marketers to be more involved in the creative process. "Directors get scripts for movies, and they get storyboards for commercials," he said. "Why not give them creative briefs for videos, and then let them put their stamp on it?" EVELYN NUSSENBAUM