For sure there is a format well developed in the TV entertainment world, the wine and food one.There is the serial by the young international creative chef (Jamie Oliver); the Tv report in the week-end with chefs, sommelliers and famous critics (Vissani, Luca Maroni ecc.), the semiprofessional and deepening one (New Work by Laura Ravaioli) and those for people who have few time but lots of passion (Nigella Express).  Even on the radio there are wine and food programmes (Decanter) or weekly appointments with interesting proposals for the week-end always connected to food. The web, especially, is full of sites about the good table, or video portals with huge amounts of channels for cooking class and degustation, more or less interesting from a quality point of view. For different reasons none of them have ever approached the product placement. The professional productions maybe considering this like a conflict of interest, the minor and independent ones not so interested in the Companies that have potentially proposed themselves. On this base, the project “Five stars Pans”, nominee at the “7 plots for 7 brands” competition presents something new as it has been thought eaxctly for the web and the product placement. Let’s thing about a video on demand, divided into subjects, very short and easy for anybody through the web. The set could be any real or creative location and the placement declinations will go from furniture to kitchenware to wine and food products .

 Few good ideas have begun to arrive about the prize “7 productions for 7 products” we talked about a month ago. In its official version it will be almost sure that its name will be “7 plot for 7 brands”. We have to say that there will not be just one winner as prizes and medals are not its aim.Its aim in fact is to point out good ideas to propose to Companies interested in planning new product placements. The web serial budgets are so low that the brands that invest become microproducers and can manage their product/webserial even following their own strategies (through their own web company, on facebook page, youtube or metcafe, DVD mobile or selling the format to some digital stations).

And within this scenery the project “Borderman” is really a great interpretation. First of all, it is not a traditional web serial, it is not just the translation of a sit-com on the web but something new called “multiformat” as it is divided into 5 sections, one after the other, about the same subject. Thanks to this, Borderman is a perfect project for product placement, keeping its plot characteristics as well as awakening the public interest. The Companies more interested in this project should be those about sports clothing and accessories, the more casual brands, and those that get around the “Indi” music. Considering its meagre investment and its planning ductility, it is a chance really full of potentialities.

Last week Evan Williams, Twitter CEO, was interviewed by the English daily Telegraph. What he said was already known, however his words could make the marketing and media planner strategists think about. The business model offered by Twitter (140 free marks for everybody any time you want) is mostly addressed to the telephone market. This because its shortness and high frequency are compatible with SMS, MMS and more in general with this generation that has made

the mobile become part of our lives. One of the most interesting ads campaigns by Twitter happens to be H3G (last month on an Italian advertising magazine there was a very good article by Angela D’Amelio). Moreover Williams has underlined that his social network is efficient as well as innovative and proposes new and free spaces and without a price list, contrarily to what the others do. These two facts get it closer to the marketing theories that have allowed the birth and development of product placement (artistic choice), and could even suggest the solution to the theme (already spoken about different times in this blog) of “Mobile Entertainment”. The moment to drop the logos, the icons, the colors, the graphic, the animation and the jingles has arrived before we have ever expected… even if we have appealed to since then.

Exactly in one week the most famous Irish Beer in the world will be 250 years old and lots of people believe the celebration will be unrestrained.Guinness likes promotional experiments, as its first example of viral marketing (not to speak about the famous idea of Guinness World Records) At the end of the 80’s there was a small disk with a strange game, where you have to pour draught beer: if you were too quick you lost. It was a genial game, you had fun, learnt how to pour rightly Guinness and connected its brand to millions of people, future Clients. That same idea, after years, has found its good place in Internet and nowadays the viral, the buzz, the guerrilla and other strategies of this kind have become the creative grandsons of this way of thinking.

At last yesterday new info about what’s happening in the marketing dept of Guinness have been whispered around: a GPS application to IPhone through which you can easily find out the nearest place where you can drink draught Guinness. Faithful to its proposition to protect the product quality, the same gadget contains even a manual with “the six steps to obtain a perfect draught beer”, besides a few screensavers and the necessary instructions to drink with moderation. Thus Guinness after videogames and Internet bets on mobiles and puts its logo on the display of any IPhone, for anyone that would like to spend one dollar and 99 to buy this application. And this is maybe the last strange fact. It is not a free gadget, but a sort of product placement paid by the public, and considering the number of lovers of such “Dark Lady”, it’s likely that Guinness could be right once again.