Product Placement

It isn't overdramatic to say that each brand has a unique character. Packaging, copywriting, and marketing materials all combine to create an image that impresses on the consumer exactly what the brand is all about. In digital advertising, imparting the essence of that character primarily comes down to two things...

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Some seasons necessitate a unique ad campaign. When fall rolls around and kids go back to school, marketers respond with aptly themed ads. Halloween and the holiday season too incite the use of relevant imagery and messaging. In the dead of winter, however, when for much of the country the passage of the weeks is marked by the height of the snow in the yard...


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DO WE FILE THIS ONE UNDER “JELLIES WITH GENITALIA”? Reports surfaced this week that a British man had complained that the packaging for Haribo brand's Maoam sour candies depicted fruits in a pornographic manner. According to the ever-reliable target="_blank">Daily Mail, Simon Simpkins of West Yorkshire complained to a local shopkeeper about the candy wrappers, in which, he said, "The lemon and lime are locked in what appears to be a carnal encounter." Now, though, it appears it was all a publicity stunt. Seems pretty fruity to us.

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A unique exercise in product placement has backfired on 20th Century Fox.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the film studio paid a high school student to plug its movie I Love You, Beth Cooper by mirroring a scene in the flick.

"The movie opens with an unassuming valedictorian using his graduation speech to proclaim his feelings for the most popular girl in school. Fox and its consultants hatched the ruse to recreate the scene at a real high school before the film's July 10 opening, say people familiar with the matter, in hopes of creating online chatter about the way the movie supposedly
inspired copycats," the WSJ writes.

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SHOPPING WITH IRONY

A Vancouver advertising agency is proving you don't have to be earnest to be environmentally friendly. It's irony-dense canvas shopping bags, featuring messages such as "See ladies, I am sensitive," and "I (heart) imported produce," are creating a buzz around the ad community. The shopping bags sell for $25 on the website for TBWA/Vancouver, with proceeds going to one of its not-for-profit clients.

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OH, JOY--INTERNET MARKETERS, IN AN effort to pump life into Web advertising, are experimenting with bigger, bolder, more interactive formats.

The Online Publishers Association this week released the formats, and 27 top U.S. Internet publishers--including The New York Times, CNN and ESPN--say they will use them, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The three new types of ads are the "fixed panel," which looks like part of the page but scrolls up and down as a user does; the "XXL box," in which users can turn pages within the ad; and the "pushdown," which opens to display a larger ad.

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HAD ENOUGH OF MICHAEL PHELPS? Just one more item, we promise. After the bong incident, the Dallas-based marketing firm Mill Sports re-evaluated the swimmer using its Davie-Brown Index, which measures athletes' brand-ability by surveying 1,000 consumers.

The good news, for him: He remains third in the ranking of sports figures, behind Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, respectively.

The bad: He took a dive in each of the index's eight measures, falling the furthest in trust and aspiration, both down 15 points on a scale of 1 to 100.

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As online media strategists and buyers, we spend the vast majority of our time planning the campaigns of others. Once a year, though, the time comes for us to turn our attention to ourselves. Whether they're last-minute efforts scheduled around client work, or elaborate endeavors for which planning starts as soon as the previous year's holidays are through, agency holiday greetings are among the most creative interactive media campaigns you're likely to find.



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HOW MANY ADS ARE TOO MANY? On websites, we can handle only so much, according to Massachusetts-based Burst Media.

In a survey of more than 4,000 Web surfers, 75 per cent said they pay less attention to ads appearing on a page they perceive to be cluttered.

What is cluttered? For about half of the surfers, it's more than two ads per page.

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Interbrand-creation Brandchannel.com has just announced the winners of its fourth annual Brandcameo awards.

"A total of 52 films were No. 1 during their respective weeks at the U.S .box office during the period of January 2007 through June 2008. Several films reigned for more than one week.

"In these..., [we] spotted 1,251 brands. This works out to approximately 24.1 discernable brands per film, completely average for the millennium."

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In this CNBC newscast, entertainment reporter Julia Boorstin looks at one way advertisers can reach that oh-so-coveted 18 to 34 demo. (And, at the risk of ruining the suspense, in-game product placement works.)

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I admit it. I've been a hardcore Simpsons fan since the show debuted.

So when I discovered that the team marketing the Simpsons movie was using reverse product placement, my first thought was, "I am not worthy."

As you probably know, product placement involves marketers paying film or television producers to showcase their brands. Think the Ford giveaways during Survivor, or how deftly Simon, Paula and Randy ensure the Coke logo on their cups face Fox's camera. While the technique can often be glaringly obvious, most audiences seem to accept that it's just the way marketing's evolving and feel they can tune it out if they want to.

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