The great outing of Sex and the City girls is the right occasion to talk about Celebrity Seeding. Let’s explain it’s something between PR ad product placement, with the aim to give the products freely to the Stars of the Show Biz and more in general to the V.I.P. (normally fashion clothes and accessories, but even design products, technological gadgets, furniture, etc.), with the hope they can use them, taken pictures of, noted on the press and obtain visibility. The good sense would like each garment and object to be selected by these people with great attention. Such a category has so much money and such acquaintances to obtain the best of the best. And it’s exactly this logical supposition that is at the base of the efficacy of the Celebrity Seedings. But the truth is different: all the people I know accept with pleasure to have and use different kinds of products free. It will be not very nice to reveal the names but I have personally see people predate some departments stores. Not to talk about those who ask their agent to call the producer or some common friends to obtail products free. In a few cases the free supply is sufficient to obtain the Seedings. In other cases it is asked even a good mediatic proposal. The most frequent example is about the design objects or white goods that become the main characters within a photo session distributed to the most important furniture reviews, very happy to publish articles about famous people and their houses. And at that point the circle gets close with the perfect logic of the win-win. The Star gets the products free, the Producing House obtains good references and visibility on important newspapers with no costs and the review gets a free interesting article. But can it be possible that the Hollywood millionaires can loose their time trying to get free the clothes and accessories even from “Sex and the City II”, as the four main characters of the movie itself are revealing just these days on channel E!. The answer to such a question is unknown, even for a rational person like me, but as it works, and works well… it doesn’t matter.

The product placement as artistic or technical choice is for sure the best, being more credible, effective and often quite unexpensive. The World Cup players in South Africa for example are good testimonials for clothing and sports accessories. Sometimes they have got an agreement and are well paid, sometimes no. Not all the players get money for wearing shoes, legwarmers, gloves, hats, etc. The Companies interested by such an important event have been preparing for long time. Lots of new models have been presented on the market just at the beginning of the World Cup, and they are so visible and evident thanks to strong colors and special shapes, such as orange and gold, even for the soles and the studs, or brilliant yellow with huge brands on it. More or less the same happens with the T-shirts, where the “three stripes” of a famous German brand are present on the shoulders of almost half of the teams present. The lesson we can read is easy. To exploit such a visible and important event, it is necessary to plan in advance the placement, with well-known products, with great esthetical and/or technical content, so to make them essential for the players. Among the players who would not get the last technological shoes, or among the music stars the new guitar with vocal control pick up for his/her performance at the MTV Music Awards?

When a few months ago, with great surprise, Oprah announced the end of her famous programme, lots of people din’t think she could retire. Her programme infact has become one of the longest in the story of the American TV and it would have been absolutely no logical to stop such a successful format and all that got around her. A few time later the announcement of her new project arrived: Oprah Winfrey Network, an entire TV channel dedicated to her and like her. Even if it was not so clear how it would have been and what kind of programming it would have had, the press office of Oprah Winfrey network began to make note press releases of brand integration with the “big spenders” of the market. After Procter&Gamble, it’s the turn of Kohl’s, a sort of general store with more than 1.000 shops in the U.S.A., to which an entire programme will be dedicated with the title of “Your OWN Show”. It would be probably the first important entertainment TV channel on the base of product placement, brand integration, contingency placement, verbal mention and more. The branches interested are so many that it would be easier to underline those unsuitable. The “made in Italy” products are for sure interesting for this project. The strenght of Oprah, her far-sightedness and her incredible capability for business have converted her in a sort of King Mida of the last 20 years. And now for lots of brands which want to emerge and consolidate their image on the American market this is really a great chance.

Lots of stories go around in the web about Alec Brownstein and many are untrue. But he is real. He has an interesting web site and his ideas, books and movies are really new. One of the best story about such a 30-year-old American copywriter relates about the way he obtained his first job in a big ads Company. With few money he bought a little space on google, pointing his messages on the first five most importat American creatives. Any time one of these wanted to know how it went his web site or if there was something new about him, at once a pop up with this writing appeared:

“Hi,.. (name and surname of the creative) questions google about oneself is really funny, isn’t it ? Well to employ me will be even much better”. With such a genial trick Alec obtained four interviews on five. From them two final job proposals. At last he was employed by the famous Young & Rubicam. It doesn’t matter if this story is true or not… for sure both the marketing and placement borders have lots to learn from such genial heads like Alec Browstein.

On June the 27^th in Las Vegas it will be the “Daytime Emmy Award”, that will give a prize to the best main characters of the daily TV (that is morning and afternoon programs), different from the “Emmy Award” that give prizes to the best actors and anchormen at prime time. Late in August there will be even the “Late Emmy Award” dedicated to the best characters of the night programs.

All these prizes are always assigned by the “National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences” from New York and Los Angeles.

The night in Las Vegas is a nice and rich kermesse organised with great attention and programmed alldaylong with interviews, backstages, the red carpets and the final ceremony. The event will be broadcasted on the national channel CBS that last year obtained more than 8 millions of viewers with a 11% of share. To such a result it should be added the many web videos, about different millions.

A few days ago the nominees were announced, and here they are. We have had the chance to talk about many of them and with pleasure we are following their success.

 2010 Daytime Emmy Award Nominees

 Outstanding Drama Series
All My Children (ABC)
The Bold and The Beautiful (CBS)
General Hospital (ABC)
The Young and the Restless (CBS)

Outstanding Lead Actor
Peter Bergman as Jack Abbott on The Young and the Restless
Doug Davidson as Paul Williams on The Young and the Restless
Jon Lindstrom as Craig Montgomery on As the World Turns
Michael Park as Jack Snyder on As the World Turns
James Scott as E.J. DiMera on Days of Our Lives Continue Reading

From August the 6^th to August the 8^th it will be great fun at the Grant Park of Chicago. It’s the turn of Lollapalooza !!! The most beautiful, different and intelligent rock Festival… Beautiful as it is organised at the Grant Park … adn Chicago is really fond of its parks!! Beautiful even for its “line-up”: Green Day, Soundgarden, Lady Gaga, The Strokes, Phoenix, Jimmy Cliff and one hundred more of singers famous and not.

Beautiful as it is a festival full of young people but even, during the day, of families, friends who make barbecues, old 50s and 60s rockers and never a problem in all these years.

Different as it’s normal that after a famous band it’s the turn of a geek trio arrived with the parents… and it’s normal that at the end the two groups play together. Different as it is a festival organised with the aim to finance the maintenance of the town parks. Usually, the great and important festivals are a business, or sometimes a help for any human emergency. But since the beginning this festival has always appealed the most famous, innovative, shocking and well-known singers and all agree with pleasure to play for the town parks….. Isn’t it fantastic? Lollapalloza is even intelligent as it exploits the cause of the parks to talk about something else: for ex. the environment education, art contests, children entertainements..

Then the business that is however inteligent; Honda for example gives as gift for the winner of the “Rock & Recycled” competition, an Insight, an hybrid model.

This fomula works so well that Toyota has decided to become main sponsor. And many other brands such as Adidas, Sony, Budweiser etc. The same could be done by Italian brands interested in proposing themselves and become part of product placement projects connected with music, young people and the environment.

The web serials are ready for a high jump. The producers (the real ones) and lots of actors (the true ones) are working upon even if without any great results. A few projects with a good concept and worthy cast have started though ending quite soon. Like “Gotham” that relates the story of “those with a second chance” with primary actors such as Martha Byrne, winner of an Emmy and Michael Park, that got a nomination at the Emmys too.

Well, for the first episode with 22.000 visitors, for the second 13.000 and now at the 13^th episode there are just 200 visitors. This serial has been visited in total from just 74.000 subscribers.

A little better for Streamboat , a mocking version of the show world with good actors as Michael O’ Leary and Beth Chamberin (both seen in the soap “Sentieri”). The first episode got 15.000 visitors and now is between 2.000 – 3.000 visits. Very few to interest the placement market. Different the case of the wonderful “Imaginary Bitches” (nominated for an Emmy in 2009) with 400.000 and 600.000 visits each episode and a total of about 7 millions. The story is a mix of funny and charming, something between “Friends” and “Sex and the City” with a cast of young, nice and really inspired actors. This project is connecting the independent, almost experimental and with low budgets productions with the serious Show Biz. The first project of those who really know how to produce a serial is a remake of Dynasty. Among the cast: Lilly Melgar (General Hospital), Tristan Rogers (General Hospital, Love Boat), Sandra Ferguson – Robinson (Anotherl World, Baywatch, General Hospital), John Callahan (Desperate Housewife, General Hospital, Falcon Crest, Santa Barbara), Taylor Stanley (Another World, Spin City), Derrel Witt (The Indruders) and lots more. The producers told me they are having lots of fun and have been able to create a wonderful mood. This serial is really good for luxury products (jewels, clothes and accessories), for the house (design and furniture) and the free time (auto, motorcycle, sport, gardening, etc.). To underline that Dynasty is the only serial by Aaron Spelling that has not got any remaking until now. Thanks to the peculiarity of the web, the news and the improvements of this project will be worldwide and point of reference for all that follows.

In a few weeks the shootings of “Cheaters” will begin; it’s the new comedy by Ron Howard, called until lately as “Your Cheating Heart”. Then the production has thought that “Cheaters” gave better the idea of the plot and so it has been changed. In the cast there are Winona Ryder, Vince Vaughn, Kevin James e Jennifer Garner.

Famous people for a great screenplay by Allan Loeb, recently at work even on “Wall Street 2” and “The Baster”. The plot is about a man that gets to know that his best-friend’s wife is unfaithful but he does not know how to manage such a situation. Vince Vaughn will be the man “who knows”, while Winona Ryder will be the unfaithful wife. The movie will be placed in Chicago for Image Entertainment and there are good chances of placement for the following products: clothing and accessories, design and furniture objects, cars and jewels.

An interesting datum that maybe is known only throughout the specialized market is that in the United States there is a huge market called “Italian Sounding” where lots of products coming from everywhere are presented as “Italian”. This fraud costs about 50 billions of euros. An example: last year while I was in New York I wanted to eat “pasta with pesto”; I went to buy some “Italian pesto” in a very famous gastronomy to realise reading the back label that it came from Chile.

Now, to regain this money there are a few solutions. One is to promote the wine and food products through TV productions dedicated to high level cuisine. Few times ago we talked about Martha Stewart, but we have to quote even “The Rocco Show”, of which I want to talk more in a future post….and the “America’s Next Great Restaurant”. A mix between a serial and a reality in which a group of future chefs get in competition to obtain the funding to realise their dream. The shootings will begin in a month and the anchorman will be chef Bobby Flay. In each episode there will be different locations to place the products, that will be managed not only in a professional contest but from a professional point of view. One month is enough to plan….

An interesting news that is going around these days is worth our attention. Even if the interested people do not know or pretend not to know anything about, it is almost sure that Microsoft and Peter Chernin (ex Chairman of News Corp, founded and managed by Rupert Murdoch) are thinking about a new TV channel for the Xbox owners. At the beginning the cost of the subscription will be almost nothing , one or two dollars maximum and it will allow to the subscribers to download updating videogames, or shows and entertainment programmes for which Fox and Twentieth Century have been reaching an agreement.

Such a novelty is interesting from a mediatic and technological point of view, as well as to fight the wild downloading through the very low cost of the subscription. Important subjects I want to talk about in the future. But this blog is connected to product placement and this is what I want to speak about. It’s well-known that a good market of the placement belongs to videogames; the banners along the cars and motorcicles circuit are with fees, as well the verbal mention and the hands on the famous people, not to speak about the brand integration operations. Continue Reading

It’s almost impossible to catalogue all the placements done by the little Mattel doll in her life (about 51 years long) and difficult to make a list of all the ways employed: recently she is appeared in some musical videos, PC, cars (Barbie Fiat 500) and in the last movie by Muccino in January (without underlining her appearance in 4 cartoon movies of which she is the main character).

Between February and March, on the buses of New Yourk (and we can rightly suppose in other American cities) there was her nice face to promote a competition. Her aim was to make the public vote about the profession of the next Barbie. However to leave such a freedom to the public can take a different direction from the expected one. The marketing managers of Mattel were sure about the Barbie “anchorwoman” … but a group of “Geek” sick of social networking have decided to subvert the result. Some voices here and there in the right places and in a few weeks Barbie has become a “Computer Engineer” with great surprise of Mattel direction that a few days ago made public the results of the competition. The idea of the competittion, the ads and all around is a genial idea but not really a product placement. All this story however has been discovered and related to the public by Ann Zimmeran on the Wall Street Journal and this is really a “Coup de Teatre”!

It was the same Mercedes-Benz USA (MBUSA), during the New York Auto Show in the Big Apple in these days, to disclose that its cars will appear in the sequel of Sex & the City. And the reasons are very simple. “It’s a feminine movie and actually one of the most important targets”. “Besides”, has added the marketing dept, “the investment has not been superior to the organisation of a series of events that would not have reached such an incredible number of persons”, maybe neither with the same efficacy and prestige we can add.Moreover this will be the first of a numbers of placement in TV (reality and sitcom we do not know any details), besides the sponsorship of the next US Open Tennis in New York (Flushing Meadows) during the summer. Their project is to have “the major visibility in terms of product placement with respect to any other luxury cars in the world”. This will be the occasion to present new models as hydrogen O emission ones or the new Class E.

About one month ago, the second season of Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami has been announced and the race to the product placements has begun. For those who do not know the serial, appeared for the first time on channel “E” in August 2009, is a spin off of the reality “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”, always on “E!” since October 2007 about the events of the famous boutique .

Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami is a spin-off in any sense, as it relates the story of two sisters, owners of the boutique (Kim Kardashian), who decide to open another one D-A-S-H in Miami. The girls live confortably, waiting for a definitive accomodation, for example they live at the Bentley Beach Hotel from which they record even the programme and for what concerns “cool things do to” they are really professional.

The announcement of the second season has astonished no one, if we consider the big success obtained by its début. For the moment 10 new episodes of thirty minutes have been promoted, enough to “anticipate” a third season by the end of this year. The Show is perfect for any fashion and design products that want to be noticed in the programme and in the channel most in of our way of life.

There are lots of thrillers and action movies at the moment on the sets… we will talk about them. But, as always, product placement likes better comedies and above all those with the actors and actress we prefer, that’s why I talk about “Q SCHOOL”. Produced by the duet Dreamworks/Paramount, the movie is about a tournament, a real one, with thousands of professional golf players that, winning this competition, can be admitted to the world one of PGA Tour.”Q School” means Qualifying School and relates the stories of Dennis Quaid and Tim Allen, an unusual couple on the golf “green” fields as well in daily life.

It’s a case of general product placement when talking about cars, clothing, accessories such as sunglasses, caps and watches, but it is even an “élite” one when talking about golf accessories and clothing. And this will be very important within the movie. In Italy there are different important Companies producing clothing and accessories dedicated to this sport, selective but expanding. The Italian option could have a better chance, thanks to its made in Italy credibility as well as to the proposal of something different as the couple of main actors itself.

A study by the Simon Fraser University at the British Columbia University (West Canada) has discovered how quick is our brain in recognizing the brands that we prefer. Just in 150” of seconds it is able to point out the logo and make is feel sensations. The eyelashes’ blink is 4 times slower, just to give you an idea.To point out a brand we don’t like or understand, we need 450” of seconds.And the same proportions when we have to remember a name or a person. This means that many of the biggest discussions by famous media planners, all the world around, during the last 25 years, have been over-passed by the study of such a “simple” encephalogram and a few frames of some videos. If a brand has its own public, it doesn’t matter if the spot lasts 30′ or 5′, it doesn’t make any difference if the billboard is seen by passing by with the car at 65 k/h or 32 k/h and, it doesn’t make any difference if the jacket is present in two and not in four scenes of the movie. Following this study it is more important if we know and like the actor or actress that wears the jacket. The product placement instead is more efficacious if, once our brain has perceived the product in the movie, it is able to recognise it in the window shops.By considering all these results it would be important to reconsider all the promotional investments promoting the emotional visibility and neglecting the time of visibility, maybe planning contemporary and following supporting activities.