The Colbert Report is broadcasting all week from Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq. In fact, the temporary stage is inside one of Sadam Hussein’s old palaces.
So far, Stephen has been pretty funny and even allowed his head to be shaved – a big thing for a guy who is identified in no small part by his perfect “anchorman” hair.
Last night, Stephen also introduced his latest sponsor, Amp’d, an “energy” drink that one can only assume tastes like ass, since he didn’t even deign to take a sip during the two prominent in-show plugs for the canned beveraged. Remember, he did in fact eat a few Doritos.
Now, I have nothing against this sort of product placement. Someone has to pay the bills and clearly viewers don’t want to pay-per-view, nor do they seem all that interested in sitting through commercials, so this sort of advertising is going to only increase.
As with the much discussed post on the Starbucks sponsorship of Morning Joe, it seems that the current approach is to be as obvious as possible about the paid promotion. This is at least less offensive than trying to trick people into believing some faux-organic integration. Plus, everyone knows the score.
The question that seems to interest folks is whether or not it is different for Amp’d to pay a satirical news program for on-air plugs than it is for Starbucks to pay the gang at Morning Joe to sip their brew while they coo with pleasure.
You are naive if you think corporate interests aren’t being served on every news program save, perhaps, public broadcasts like NPR (haters please comment below), so, I say, at least when it is all in your face you can decide for yourself what might be tainted.
Tags: ampd, Baghdad, Camp Victory, colbert, colbert report, ColbertReport, Iraq, Morning Joe, product placement, Saddam Hussein, starbucks, Stephen Colbert, stephencolbert]
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June 10, 2009 6:07 pm | 
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A few weeks ago there was what appeared to be some mild uproar about an especially blatant product placement in an episode of NBC’s “Chuck,” in which not only were Subway subs featured, but someone on the show actually spoke the brand’s current tagline.
Many asked if this was going to far and if it was a sign of TV being destroyed by advertising. They wondered if fans would stand for it!
Turns out, not only will fans stand for it, but if it will save their show from being canceled they’ll embrace it:
Chuck diehards are organizing a campaign to buy Subway sandwiches on the night of the show’s season finale next week in an attempt to influence NBC via one of the show’s main sponsors.
Got that? Fans clearly don’t mind product placement done reasonably well and anyone who blames a show’s failure on branded content elements should probably look at the writers and directors before blaming the products.
This weird “church and state” notion of original content and advertising is out-dated and instead of fighting the integration, the smart people are out there looking at how to maximize value of content to both the viewer and the brand sponsor.
LINK
The UK Parliament has upheld a ban on product placement in television programming. While I guess one could applaud the government for trying to maintain so sort of purity it doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny.
For starters, the ban is only on shows made by Brits and for Brits. Shows made in countries that allow product placement will still be allowed to air. If you’ve ever been to the UK you know how much US programming has permeated their television. This decision effectively makes it even harder for UK TV producers to compete with US companies since traditional ad revenue is drying up quickly and they will not be able to tap into the growing revenue generated by product placement.
It’s also hard to understand where the harm lies in product placement. Our lives are saturated in brands. From the Colgate toothpaste in the morning to the TylenolPM at night, we are completely surrounded by products. So, it is simply natural that the characters on our TV shows would be equally exposed. That one company can pay to be the featured product is just making the best of the situation.
And why pick on TV? Think how much “product placement” there is online and in movies. Why is the government so concerned with TV?
Why not invest money in creating early-education intervention to teach children how to think critically about all the media they consume? Yeah, I know, that would be hard. Writing and passing silly legislation is a whole lot easier.
(via)
Some time ago, I noticed a Starbucks coffee cup in front of a news anchor for MSNBC and wondered if it was a casual mistake or paid placement.
Now comes word that McDonalds is, in fact, paying to have their coffee cups displayed in front of news anchors:
“The Las Vegas Sun reported last week that Meredith-owned KVVU, a Fox affiliate, placed cups of McDonald’s iced coffee on the anchor desk during the morning show in recent weeks. The New York Times reported that other Meredith-owned stations across the country have also been accepting product placements during morning programming.” (via)
This has caused much noise in the blog-o-sphere about whether or not this violates the perceived “church and state” separation between news and advertising.
For better or for worse, that barrier fell ages ago and whether or not advertisers get cups in front of anchors is pretty meaningless at this point. Besides, go to CNN.com or any other news website and the news is surrounded by various forms of advertising. How is that product placement any different?
Sometimes a scheme comes along that just ticks off every one of my “this is terrible” boxes.
Sprint’s new campaign for the Instinct (the phone that wishes it was an iPhone but it isn’t so it’s just lame) includes a contest whereby you insert a very ugly video of a hand holding an instinct phone into your YouTube video. In return, you will be entered to win $10,000.
This video explains:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfp1vRNo7Zk&hl=en]
Here’s the thing: we all hate this sort of product placement so why would we want to inflict it on our friends, the only people likely to be watching our videos in the first place?
Way to go Sprint! First your idiot CEO runs his email address at the end of all those ads and then never replies to email I send him and now you want me to make my own videos horrible for you?
I can’t wait for my iPhone!
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Zadby.com is currently out in beta and joins the ranks of a number of other services out there that are trying to bring together independent video producers and brand marketers.
Here’s their pitch:
“Zadby is an online marketplace where advertisers, marketers, and brand managers can connect with freelance video producers to create innovative product placement videos for distribution through outlets like YouTube and MySpace. Advertisers define what they want in a campaign; video producers shoot the videos; and Zadby facilitates, tracking the views and paying the producer on a per-view basis. It’s a low-risk proposition for a brand since it is view based and video producers get bucks for what they are doing anyway.”
The process seems to be different from project to project with each potential sponsor setting the terms. For the most part, if you see a commission that appeals to you they want you to go off, make your video with the product placement, post the video and then they will decide if it qualifies for payment.
Payment seems to be CPM based. The current commission, from Polk Audio, is offering CPM rate of $12.80.
It’s definitely too soon to tell in terms of whether this sort of model can work but I do like seeing new ways for independent producers to cashify their efforts.
The fun to say Zibb.com has a post about the recently launched Storybids:
“Storybids, Inc. is a venture capital funded start up based in Irvine, CA focusing on in-video advertisement via product placement in user generated content as well as professionally scripted webisodes. Storybids offers a new way to monetize video by inserting actual product, services or verbal mentions pre-production before a video goes viral. The videos uploaded via content creators may be uploaded to multiple video hosting sites at once and then tracked via analytics for performance via their dashboard. Advertisers may select video content creators in the marketplace via a search tool that tracks views, comments and ratings across multiple video hosting sites.”
I’ve poked around the site but haven’t taken a deep look just yet (read: don’t feel up to registering for anything at the moment…). Over the weekend I think I’ll try submitting a project and then I’ll report back with the results.
According to the rather hybolic verbage on the site I’m pretty certain I will be writing that post from the Yacht I buy with the millions of dollars they’re going to help me make.
There’s been lots of talk about the return of live, in-show ads in a number of talk shows including Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno and Ellen Degeneres and now networks like NBC are making it clear that their new slate of webisodes will include a new degree of product integration beyond just simple brand placement.
What will this actually mean? Well, it depends on how far they go in the name of the sponsor at the cost of the viewer. It’s not as though modern viewers are used to being bombarded with a constant stream of corporate names and images and if those elements happen to be part of a good plotline with compelling characters people won’t care at all. However, if the show itself is just a vehicle for the brand or the message than viewers will be turned off from both the show and the sponsors.
A bigger question might be whether or not a brand well-integrated into a show will still have the desired effect of driving sales…
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