From August the 6th to August the 8th it will be great fun at the Grant Park of Chicago. It’s the turn ofLollapalooza !!! 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.
After 26 years, Hollywood has thought to do a remake of the well-loved “Footloose”, about the way to rebel and modernize of a group of young people in a very little American province town, still all cowboys and Calvinist sermons. The Paramount has called Chace Crawford for the role of Kevin Bacon, after the giving up of Zac Efron (maybe worried by the unavoidable comparison with the big actor). To Crawford’s side the nice Hulianne Hough, country singer famous to the big public for her double victory at the American edition of “Dancing with the Stars”.
The Footloose 2011 edition will be dominated by the urban music and important coreographies, guaranteed by a very huge budget (25 millions of dollars). The beginning of the shooting has not been decided yet, but it will be after the middle of March for sure. Among the most needed products there are young and modern clothing, music and everyday teenager life products.
Since time the Tv formats for teenagers are a sort of mix (or “crossover”)between music and light comedy, with a little bit of action, good feelings , humour and comics.The first examples get back to the 60s when the serial “The Monkees” (a sort of stupid Beatles clone) allowed the band to sell more than the real “Fab Four” that they imitated.In the 70s other formulas like the glossy “Partridge Family”, inspired to the true story of Cowllins Family that a few years before had obtained quite a good success in the USA. Even in this case, the record sell-out was quite a good success, in fact both in 2001 and 2005 there were a few rieditions. Again in that years, David Soul, the famous “Hutch” in “Starsky and Hutch” in one episode played the guitar. At the same time his LP was played around and reached the first place in the most important music top tens….. and it was not the last time. In the 80s there was the musical “Fame”, in the 90s the R&B (“Will the Prince of Bell Air”, above all). In the last few years there have been quite two phenomenons: High School Music (the updated version of “Fame”) and the nice Hannah Montana, a sort of mp3 version of Happy Days.
However the most interesting among the recent productions is “The Jonas” by Walt Disney Continue Reading
In 2009 Lady Gaga was proclaimed the artist of the year. Innovation, provocation, intuition and long-view have made of Lady Gaga a rich, famous and appreciated artist. The 2010 has begun much better with an incredible mediatic appearance. Still at the end of 2009 she has begun to gather prizes (Stylemaker Award) to do her best at the “People’s Choiche Awards” thus opening, a few hours ago, the Grammy Awards with Elton John. This eclectic artist is really interesting as she has considered product placement as an essential resource both for “fund recruirement” as well “look scouting”. Thus the video “Bad Romance” for example, has officially confirmed 8 product placements with brands such as “Nemiroff” Vodka, “HP”, “Nintendo “Wii”, Burberry, Safari glasses, etc.
Even if the musical videos have always been a way to promote brands and products through product placement, at least in Europe this opportunity is still nowadays undervalued. On the contrary it is an unexpensive, “well targeted” mean, quick in terms of results and easy to realise. And the big/medium Companies that one year ago believed in this great outsider of the Show Biz today can well enjoy themselves.
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.
This interesting speech by the journalist Stefania Carini published yesterday on the portal “Corriere.it” relates, maybe for the first time, about the close relationship between the pop music and the serials. It has been talked a lot about the movie sound-tracks from Hollywood, Europe and Italy, much less about the relation between the music and the coreography in the Bollywood productions, where it is not so unsual that the CD copies are sold in a greater number than the tickets of the movie itself.
What connects the music singers to the serial itself is something much more substantial. Sometimes the artist can play the role of him/herself in the plot (Ally McBeal, Las Vegas, Eli Stone, Dharma & Greg, etc.) or a different character well integrated in the story itself though mimicing him/herself a little bit. In “Will & Grace” this has happened each season, with famous artists such as Madonna, Elton John and Janet Jackson. In both cases when this marriage is well amanged it becomes a sort of academic declination of “Win-Win” logic, so loved by the Americans. That is both can profit from such a collaboration, even the public itself. The production enriches the episode in quality with the presence of a hit or a famous character, thus enlarging even its public with that part of fans that otherwise would never watched the serial. The artist employs such a way to give visibility to his/her character, to pass his/her music on a different channel towards a public not so easily reachable and maybe he/she realizes even to be a fairly good actor.
It is useful to note how often the music and TV Productions address to the same agencies of product placement. In the next future the serials, that in the USA are called TV Shows, will become a little bit comedies, a little bit musical and mall. At the beginning people will shout at the scandal but this has already happened when we have moved from theatre to cinema to TV to the web serials. Later on all these instruments will find out their proper spaces, languages and nature. And those who still want a scandal will look for it somewhere else.
Stephanie Savage, producer and screensaver of “Gossip Girl”, answering to a question by a Los Angeles Time’s journalist (Adam Tschorn) about the big problem of zapping, made an interesting comparison.
The big networks and the studios are trying to compensate the loss caused by the minor presence of the ads spots with product placement. Introducing the products directly within the show, you can avoid “flippering”, that provokes damages not only to the advertisers but even to the channel and the producers themselves thus lessening the fidelity of the public to the programme. It’s almost what’s happening in the music world. The selling out of records is diminishing, thus the managers of the groups and the singers have been thinking about a solution. Many have thought about product placement.
Gwen Stefani e Justin Timberlake for example, have a fashion collection on their own and wear it any time and this is an exceptional promotional way, maybe profitable as much as the records selling out. But Stephanie Savage tells something more and reveals a few techniques and interesting applications. A musician can sign a contract with a fashion Company in order to wear its own clothes and maybe exploit his/her image for ads (this is called Tie in), or can wear them only sometimes and be shooted by the press (Cameo) or once more make a fashion collection with his/her name (partnership).
All these examples should be divided into two big categories, “Inside the Show or Outside the Show”, that is during the concerts or the private life (that most of the time is public). The choices of the different kind of placement are planned by marketing strategies, depending on the budget, on the wish to monopolize more or less the same star or to the desire to be a little bit underground, something that the stylists still like.
Lots of people mix up wrongly Product Placement and hidden advertising. To tell you the truth Product Placement is exactly the contrary. If it were hidden, nobody would care about it. The Clients of Product Placement want their product to be visible and recognizable; this is the only way they can exploit it for their press releases and promotions.
I want to clear this point as especially in the USA, where people love rankings and categories, it is easy to confuse Product Placement and Neuromarketing that represents one of the most blameworthy and less ethical activity. It is one of the most extreme solution still quite empty from promos and brands. The rumor that is going around these days concerns the declarations of a hip hop music producer (Russels Simmons co-fonder of Def jam label) that has declared to have received an offer by McDonald to put its name within a hit. The prize wpuld be of 1 dollar at each radio message. The agreement has not reached as the producer wanted it to remain secret, impossible thing for the huge fast food Company. Following this revelation, it has been disclosed that a few Agencies that have a “segretive division” had offered the same thing to about 30 artists (such as Lil Wayne, Keri Hilson, The Pussycat Dolls, Black Eye’d Peas, Eminem) in the last six months but with no success.The artistic integrity is much more important than a marketing project has been the general answer.
And it’s exactly what think those that work around product placement. No director, actor, screenwriter or producer would squalify his job for 15.000€ of product placement. It so unexpensive the position within an important Hollywood film, though it’s always an artistic choice, able to define a character, a scene or to interact with the plot itself.
Stephanie Savage, producer and screensaver of “Gossip Girl”, answering to a question by a Los Angeles Time’s journalist (Adam Tschorn) about the big problem of zapping, made an interesting comparison.
