Product Placement for Advertising
Rebecca Brayton: Hi, I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome to WatchMojo.com. And today, we’re speaking with Terry O’Reilly who will be telling us more about the history of branded content and product replacement as well as the effects of social media on advertising.
Can you talk to us a bit more about branded content and product replacement?
Terry O’Reilly: I don’t know if you watch Madman, but I love that show. Products have a big part in that show so Jack Daniels is part of the script. You see him just drinking a lot in that show so they are always drinking Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels has paid a lot of money doing part of that script, so there’s probably replacement at work. That is one of the oldest forms of marketing.
So when radio first appeared in the 20s and into the 30s, product replacement was in all the shows with Jack Benny show, Jamison Andy, all those great radio shows, they had products woven into the script. So Jack Benny would be doing a commonly routine and suddenly start talking about Lucky Strike cigarettes, sort in the middle of the routine, not going to a commercial but in the middle of the script.
Branded content, I’ll give you a couple of examples of it. So when you watch The Apprentice and one of the tasks on The Apprentice, for example they’ll say okay. The two groups, you have to create a great ad for Kodak, and then you have to come back at the end of the show and tell us what your great advertising campaign was and how it did. That’s branded content.
So the whole show is about Kodak, not just a section or it’s not just a Kodak product sitting in a scene, the whole show was about Kodak. So that is what branded content is, is where the content has been branded completely by an advertiser. I think that’s really successful. I mean if you can get an half hour in primetime dedicated to your product, that’s a big hit out on the park home run to me.
But it still has to be good, like you can’t just be there. It has to be a great show and it has to be worth watching for it to be successful.
Rebecca Brayton: What effects have social media sites and the YouTube of the world had on your industry?
Terry O’Reilly: YouTube has been a huge impact in our business because suddenly you can post television spots for example and sometimes, not all the time, sometimes, which millions of people at zero media cost. I mean television advertising is the most expensive advertising you could do. And here is suddenly this vehicle where if you have a great idea and it catches on, you can literally reach million. So here’s an example. That great Dove ad you may remember where you see the woman’s face transform. That was done by a Canadian agency. And that got something like five million views inside of couple weeks. Like you couldn’t even get that on the best TV media by, so that’s how YouTube has impacted advertising, is it gives you an opportunity to reach millions of people at zero, at absolutely zero cost other than the production of the spot.
The flip side is Facebook, Twitter, other social sites marketing hasn’t figured out how to use those well yet because I think the problem is those sites are social places, not market places. So I think advertisings having—they’re looking through the window and they’re seeing millions of people there but they don’t quite how to work it yet. So I think that will be the next bid in advertising is they’ll figure out how to use Facebook and Twitter well. Right now, they’re doing it poorly and not doing at all because they’re afraid the community is going revolt.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services