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Product Placement at the Oscars? Really?

This year was the 80th Anniversary of the Oscars. Among all the personalities that went on Stage at the Academy Awards, two were noteworthy - The beloved Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone. Although this was the first time iPhone and Wii went to the Oscars, they graced the stage and played a part of the proceedings at the prestigious awards ceremony.

On stage, Jon Stewart pulls out his iPhone to watch Lawrence of Arabia, then turns it sideways and comments “it looks even better in wide screen”!!

Jon Stewart showing off the iPhone at the Oscars. Feb 25, 2008.

Later on, Stewart played tennis on stage, on the Nintendo Wii with Jamia Simone Nash who starred in August Rush. Although you could hear people laughing in the background, this was a pitiful placement concept that was hardly funny. One could at best smile at the antic. Nintendo should have bargained for a better concept.!. Jon and Jamia jump around like two kids in what looks like a completely “put up” effort. Good job Nintendo, you got associated with two people who look completely stupid on stage. They probably got you looking stupid as well!

Remember my previous post - Product Placement for the sake of product placement will kill your brand! Its got to be smooth and slick.

Jon Stewart and Jamia Simone Nash play the Nintendo Wii on stage at the Oscars. Feb 25, 2008.

Product Placement has to flow with the show, otherwise you are putting your brand at risk. Here is an idea of how the Nintendo Placement could have been done well. For the “Best Special Effects” category, or something like that, you could have had the presenter use a Wii to present a virtual Oscar to the winner and have the winner receive it using another Wii handset!! Ofcourse , after the fun, you would give the winner the real Oscar and invite him to make his speech. Now, that would have been a really cool placement concept for the Nintendo Wii.

Watch the Stupid Video Clip here :

In the book Innovator’s Solution, the author Clayton Christensen discusses a very powerful concept of redefining how to segment your customers. Traditionally customers were being segmented based on demographic attributes such as i.e. gender, age or other attributes such as purchasing power i.e. High end customers vs. Low End (value) customers.

However Clayton introduces a new concept of segmenting customers(Segmentation 2.0) based on their “Jobs-to-be-done” or specific “needs”. This is based on the idea that the same customer may prefer two different versions of the same product depending on what is the specific need. To illustrate this the book cites an example of a study done at a fast food restaurant serving milkshakes. The study showed that most of the adults who purchased milkshakes in the morning purchased it to kill time in their morning commute. Also they wanted something that that will not spill on their work clothes. So they preferred thick milkshakes that will last longer and will not spill easily. Many of the same adults preferred a more fluid milkshake in the afternoon because they were typically with their kids when buying the milkshakes and they wanted the kids to drink as quickly as possible so they can go home quickly. This shows that the same adults with similar demographics preferred two types of product depending on what need they were satisfying at that point in time. A traditional segmentation method would have failed to appreciate this difference.

This new way of segmentation presents a big challenge in creating a targeted advertisement for the product. Advertisements are typically targeted towards certain set of customers based on their attributes. It is very difficult to target different needs of the same customer at different times. This requires the advertisements to tell a strong story so that they can communicate to the specific scenarios.

Product placement is one advertisement vehicle that presents this opportunity naturally. Product placement by definition is deep integration of brand or product with the content/script. If the advertiser carefully chooses the script, it can speak to the specific customer need that a product can serve to rather than a specific customer group. Customers viewing these videos sub-consciously associate the product or brand with the specific need that is being met.

Ofcourse you can!!

Watch this video(produced by Creative Bube Tube) to see how easy it is to place products in your video.

Products placed in the video : Lifehacker, Lucky Charms & 7Up.

Looks Easy ? Exciting? Gives you Ideas of how you can make money on your next YouTube video?

Demographic targeting has always been the mantra of advertising. That’s old hat. The new mantra for new-age advertising seems to be “Super Targeting”. Reaching the 18 to 20 year olds is not enough anymore. For example, an advertiser might need to target the 18 to 20 year olds who do all of the following:

1. love their ipods
2. listen predominantly to Hip-Hop
3. play atleast two sports
4. watch thriller movies
5. participate in online movie and music discussion communities
6. are active members on facebook and myspace

You get the idea……
The onset of social networking and social networking aspects and technology in websites like video websites, music websites and other popular portals and forums has given the advertiser a great set of tools to make his demographic targeting super-fine. Not only can he address the age demographic, but he can also target a small, niche and a vertical population segment within the desired age demographic. This is unprecedented in the advertising world. Never before was reaching out to such specific segments of the population so easy as it is now.

Such ads, served to super fine targeted communities will be extremely effective. They command premium price. But, the advertisers are happy to pay more to target a hard to reach group of people.

Social networking technology will grow more and more sophisticated that the advertiser will have more options to effectively concentrate his advertising dollars on the specific demographic of his choice.

Did you see a red sports car advertisement while checking out the “swim suits” on Sports Illustrated?? No surprises there… Thats “old hat” targeting.

Now, imagine this scenario :

• You are a middle aged school teacher.
• You love classical music.
• You participate actively and share information on Zecco’s Stock Investor Community.
• You just made a killing in the stock market, which has made you a star on Zecco.
• You just posted on Facebook that you love the new Lamborghini.
• You are presently chatting in a social network for middle aged school teachers.
• In the banner space where you always saw ads for Beethoven, Mozart Music CDs , you now see an ad for the New Lamborghini that you love so much !!

Scary? Uncanny? Absolutely!

Coincidence?? Probably not!

Welcome to the new world of “super targeting”, where you see exactly what you desire!!

Volumes in mobile advertising have become interesting for the first time. At the Mobile World Congress happening in Barcelona today, AdMob Inc. announced that they served 2.4 billion impressions in January’08 (up roughly six-fold since January’07).

The iPhone is expected to reach ~5% of ad impressions by early 2008. This is much higher than the number of iPhones as a percentage of total cell phones. Although this news is pormising, the iPhone was conspicuous in the last position on the chart.

Other interesting companies to watch out for : Nokia/Enpocket , Ad Infuse Inc. , Amobee Inc. , Medio Systems Inc.

A very good CNBC report on the Product Placement Industry, what it is and how it functions today.

The Online Video industry is exploding! ComScore reported yesterday that a record 10 billion online videos were watched in December 2007. The reasons that most contributed to this unbelievable growth were

• The stale and boring programming on broadcast television (caused by the WGA strike and Television’s uninteresting and stereotypical programming).
• The increasing popularity of online video sites.

YouTube was the top site within the Google family. It captured more than 97 percent of videos watched on the Google video sites.

This table gives numbers on Unique Video Viewers.

141 million Americans headed to the Web for videos, says ComScore. The top 3 players were -

• FIRST : Google/Youtube was first with 79 million unique viewers.
• SECOND : Fox Interactive Media was second with 43.9 million unique viewers.
• THIRD : Yahoo Inc. was third with 38.2 million unique viewers.

Other Interesting Stats for the month of December 2007 -

• The average viewer consumed 3.4 hours of video during December’07.
• The video consumption of an average viewer increased 34% in the last year.
• The average video duration was 2.8 minutes.
• The average viewer watched 72 videosin December’07.

This table gives numbers on Total Videos viewed.

The most interesting questions to ask would be :

• How can these videos be monetized effectively?
• What advertising model should be used that would best suit online videos?
• Can we advertise smartly enough to avoid taking online video back to the time of annoying television ads.
• Is anyone up for the challenge?

There is a school of thought that believes that content creators are considered “sold” when they allow companies to integrate the brand with their content. How reasonable is this school of thought ?. When I see Letterman’s late night show, every guest that appears on the show ends up promoting one of his or her content explicitly. But still , the interview with this guest is considered to be a content and 30-second advertisements follow this so called “content”. But in reality the guest is there to promote their agenda and in that process end up contributing to Letterman’s show. So all the fuss about product placement diluting the creative value of the content is not well founded.

Many movie makers need to use props for the movies, regardless of whether it is sponsored by a brand or not. One of the key ways to strongly establish a character quickly in a movie is through the character’s preferences such as what products does she like, how does she dress, talk and what are her favorite hang out places in the movie etc. This establishes her lifestyle and through that her character in the movie really well without too many shots. Converting these props into revenue generating vehicles is one of the best strategies that a producer can employ to support their budget. I dont see how the the content’s creative value is diluted in this case, as long as it is tastefully done.

I just got back from watching a movie called Juno. It had two prominent product placements, sunny-D and Tic-Tac. Tic-Tac had the most prominent marketing message. The protagonist says to her boyfriend “Well you know, because they’re your fave - and I figured you could never have enough of your favorite one calorie breath mints.” However interestingly, Tic-Tac is better integrated into the script of the movie than Sunny-D. Her boyfriend’s character is established with a strong liking towards Tic Tac, where as Sunny-D is something the main character carrys with her in the first scene.

The interesting aspect about product placement is , if done well, even though the audience realizes that these are product placements, they perceive this as an integral part and a required part of the story. This is similar to how the viewers are tolerant about late-night show guests promoting their movies or the band performing on SNL with an intent to increase their record sales.

So movie makers and producers will soon realize, if they have not already done so, that their props are great sources to generate additional revenue and that product placement is a win-win strategy to offer good entertaining experience to their viewers without having to force intrusive advertisements on the viewer.

Webisodes are the online equivalent of TV episodes. Webisodes like KateModern and Sofia’s Diary are attracting a large and crazed following in the UK and Europe. KateModern, a Bebo driven webisode is the most popular in the EU. It is so popular that local language editions are expected in Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Holland.

Bebo’s other webisode - Sofia’s Diary is based on a Portugese soap opera. It has become so popular and is growing so fast within Bebo that it has made Bebo the greatest social networking website in Europe. Sofia’s Diary is an interactive teen web drama and is being launched as a joint venture of Bebo and Sony Pictures. Sofia’s Diary webisodes are interactive 1-3 minute episodes that have tremendously impressed advertisers because they reach teens and the twenties. Similar to KateModern, Sofia’s Diary will telecast the real time life of UK teenager Sofia. Daily videos and messages are also posted on Sofia’s Bebo profile. The shows are a mix of real life and fictional events and viewers are kept involved with real time interaction with the show’s characters.

With Webisodes becoming so popular, they are attracting Product Placement deals. KateModern has signed multiple six-figure deals to place brands like Orange, MSN, Procter & Gamble, Disney and Atlantic Records. Sofia’s Diary is in talks with major brands to integrate their brands in the show. Bebo’s partnership with Yahoo! will further help Bebo to provide better sponsorship and product placements in Sofia’s Diary.

Campbell Ryan Film Productions Ltd has been signed up to professionally shoot and produce a technically high quality first season of Sofia’s Diary.

Sofia’s Diary is Written by BAFTA-winning Irish writer Danny Stack, Melanie Martinez and Marta Gomes.

The Writer’s Guild of America(WGA) strike has come as a blessing in disguise for many independent content creators. It has enabled them to understand the power of the internet as a direct distribution medium. Many have told me that they are thinking about taking their content directly to the web without going through studios and distributors. Every producer is trying to become his own distributor.

All this is good news. More creators are bringing their videos directly to the web. These professional and semi professional content creators who make quality content will slowly but surely attract viewership on the web. As the content creators migrate to the web, so will the advertisers. Where viewers go advertisements will follow. Newer ways of advertising on these videos need to be invented and the videos needs to be distributed widely and monetized effectively to benefit the creator, advertiser and distributor.

We can expect the networks to start taking financial hits as more and more ads start to go to online media. The networks are huge but they will feel the pinch!

Take a look at a network-by-network roundup of content that has not been aired because of the WGA strike. Also included are previously announced alternative series orders and midseason replacement series.

Its a long list. The networks should be afraid of this trend.

ABC shows not yet aired this season:

• ACCORDING TO JIM (comedy)
• CASHMERE MAFIA (drama)
• DANCE WAR: BRUNO VS. CARRIE ANN (alt)
• DUEL (alt)
• ELI STONE (drama)
• SUPERNANNY (alt)
• WIFE SWAP (alt)
• LOST (drama)
• MISS/GUIDED (comedy)
• OPRAH’S BIG GIVE (alt)
• WANNA BET (alt)

CBS shows not yet aired this season:

• AMAZING RACE 12 (alt)
• THE CAPTAIN (comedy)
• JERICHO (drama)
• JINGLES (alt)
• MILLION DOLLAR PASSWORD (alt)
• THE NEW ADVENTURES OF OLD CHRISTINE (comedy)
• SURVIVOR 16 (alt)
• SWINGTOWN (drama)

The CW shows not yet aired this season:

• CROWNED: THE MOTHER OF ALL PAGEANTS (alt)
• EIGHT DAYS A WEEK (comedy)
• FARMER WANTS A WIFE (alt)
• ONE TREE HILL (drama)
• PUSSYCAT DOLLS PRESENT: THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT DOLL 2 (alt)

FOX shows not yet aired this season:

• 24 (drama)
• AMERICAN IDOL 7 (alt)
• CANTERBURY’S LAW (drama)
• HELL’S KITCHEN 4 (alt)
• KITCHEN NIGHTMARES 2 (alt)
• NEW AMSTERDAM (drama)
• NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (alt)
• RETURN OF JEZEBEL JAMES, THE (comedy)
• TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (drama)
• UNHITCHED (comedy)

NBC shows not yet aired this season:

• 1 VS 100 (alt)
• AMERICAN GLADIATORS (alt)
• AMNESIA (alt)
• THE APPRENTICE 7 (alt)
• CLASH OF THE CHOIRS (alt)
• IT CROWD (comedy)
• MY DAD IS BETTER THAN YOUR DAD (alt)
• WORLD MOVES (alt)