I am not sure how many of you caught Ben Silverman on Charlie Rose last night but it was quite an interesting interview (http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9554#frame_top) and got me thinking about the fate of advertising in TV. As they sat and discussed the growing use of time-shifting technology the move of companies wanting to do advertising will move to product placement. That raised a few questions for me that I would love to get people's thoughts on:
1) According to a lot of stuff I have been reading, product placement has not brought the success companies thought (and advertising companies pitched) it would. If this is going to be the de-facto standard what needs to change to make it successful? Is there any meaningful way to measure the success of this type of advertising?
2) Putting my TV executives hat on, I always thought a major way to generate follow up revenue on the success of a series was to eventually license it to someone else on a different network. If this is the case, will NBC want to buy a show from TNT stuffed with product placement ads from GM if their advertisers are Toyota? I am assuming there will be a fine line between what people (read: viewers) are willing to accept vs. an infomercial-esque TV series (Vincent D'Onofrio using a Dell laptop vs. him eating a sandwich from Jimmy's Deli and drinking a Coke while interrogating a suspect).
3) If product placement advertising isn't the answer to save TV, then what is? My quick thoughts on this is that product placement will only work in a subtle fashion and will demand consistency, not only from a particular series but on a given network. Haven't done the market research but I am willing to bet that people have a strong tendency to cling to a network so if every show on ABC uses Dell laptops people will likely think of buying from Dell next time. I would love to see the statistics of the recent success of Taittinger champagne, as Bravo has clearly 'placed' it in nearly every show on the network. I also strongly believe the corresponding web portals will move away from being bolt-on aspects and become a critical component right from the start. Executives will have to think carefully about how best to use these tools as they will play a huge role and will become a major selling point for advertisers.
Would love to hear what other people are thinking about this especially when companies are moving towards using only proven advertising models and/or have short attention span for experimentation.
6 comments:
Product placement is tricky business. It's hard to know what is going to be subtle enough to be noticed without egregiously pimping it. Even if you try to make something subtle by only showing a part of the logo, savvy audiences will notice and call foul. Actually they won't call foul, but they will subconsciously lose a fraction of their interest in what they're watching because the brain throws the "this is an ad" switch.
Spielberg got it right with Reeses Pieces in E.T., made it such an inseparable part of the plot that it can't be taken as anything but additive to the storyline. I think brand integration has to be done this way to be a net gain. Either make the brand so deeply intertwined with the plot that the story would fall apart without it, or go the complete opposite route and separate the content from the product completely, use a bumper at the beginning and end of the show saying "This show brought to you by Inc". It's about creating good will toward your product, and product-placement done wrong is definitely not going to help that.
Purists say that product and art should never be joined:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4wh_mc8hRE
But I'm of the opinion that artists have to make money, and it's never been easy for them to do that. So all avenues should be open.
agree with Adam and have more examples from the fashion industry,
which I think is especially successful with product integration -
this isn't exactly the right audience to bring up Sex & The City
movie ;) but what they did with Louis Vuitton was a great brand
integration. All because LV have already built emotional value for 100
years, and this value suited that particular SATC character.
another great example - almost any fashion item shown on the popular
"Gossip Girl" series becomes an instant hit - there are sites
dedicated specifically to the products used in the series, actually
helping people to shop!
Remember the famous light blue speedo worn by Daniel Craig at the
previous 007? You can only imagine how many men made this piece of
lycra by La Perla a best-seller ;)
It's more difficult with electronics, unless they already have their
own stereotype/ character or emotional value - it can work for brands
like Apple, but will be tough for someone relatively unknown. In order
to succeed in this case, the product needs to be integrated into the
script and not just placed on the set by clever marketers.
Thomas - on #3, I don't think networks have any meanings in days when
content is consumed on Hulu, DVR or Apple TVs. Networks are content
providers, not necessarily destinations these days.
Do you know what the click through rate is on advertising that appears at the beginning or end of video clips? Where could I find those statistics? My gut instinct tells me that its not that good. One startup that I am aware of that might have a good solution to this is taboola (www.taboola.com). Any others people are aware of?
I strongly agree that Spielberg got it right (M&M's screwed up if I remember the story correctly). The question though, is are there always opportunities to tightly integrated product placement with the show? Even if you could do it "right," a major problem still seems to be the ability to resell the rights to other stations at a later point in time. Anyone aware of the legality of overlaying a product with another? Is anyone out there doing this?
Yuli-
Not sure exactly what you mean about networks not having any "meaning in days when content is consumed"? Can you please elaborate?
Taking a stab at what I think you mean, Ben actually spoke about this new advertising model which he refers to as C3. It works whereby NBC takes 3 days worth of data after the show is aired in its regular time slot and adds up the number of times viewers actually watch a commercial. Not sure if every network is doing this but seems like a logical thing an advertiser would demand.
BTW, for those that are interested the link to the interview is here: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9554
(Ben mentions the C3 model around minute 15)
-Thomas
Thomas - what I meant by saying that TV networks aren't destinations
anymore, is that people don't have to tune in at a certain time on a
certain channel to consume their favorite shows. They can watch it on
DVR few days later, fast-forwarding the commercials (as I do) or watch
it online, like 46% of tv audience according to recent CBS study. They
simply don't control your time and watching habits anymore.
I know networks still apply the same old model online with pre-rolls,
but this will have to shift as well, as brands learn more on how to
converse with consumers instead of "interrupting" them for 15 seconds
during their leisure time.
There was a very interesting article yesterday that suggested that
Click-through is not the only metric for assessing the effectiveness
of ads. The "view-through" tracking is based on dropping a cookie
when a visitor is exposed to an ad and then having a web beacon that
sees that cookie on the destination site. The view through metrics
from a comScore study suggest that those who are exposed to media have
a higher propensity to visit the sites they are exposed to, even if it
is not by clicking on the ad itself.
http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/metrics_insider/?p=110
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