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 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.

 About one week ago I wrote about product placement in the web.An interesting and recent “case history” by Rebook, a video diffused on May the 23^rd to promote the new football shoes, has as main characters Thierry Henry (Barça) e Ryan Giggs (Manchester United). The two players have infact worn these shoes during the final match in Rome.

In the video there are co-placements too (mobile and laptop by apple), maybe exchanged for a link popularity consulting. The plot relates the challenge through jokes between the two players with “Anything you can do, I can do better” as background music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqxRDIBkDbo

…. Because the e-commerce field in Italy has grown a lot. Its value has reached unbelievable results. Maybe it’s the world economic crisis, maybe the less available time to go shopping, maybe the lack of desire, but whatever is a simple click on the PC is much more appreciated than going out to watch the shop windows.

From clothing to electronics, to insurance policies, but it’s the clothing sector which is growing more: there are important brands such as Armani, Prada, Gucci, Energie, Diesel, Pinko, Bata. The last one is Furla, that in November has opened a European web site while the American one has been officially opened in March. And then the story of Loriblu, an artisan company very popular among the ladies of the new Russian middle class. Another popular phenomenon are the virtual outlets where you can find the most important brands discounted until 50%. In Italy, for example, between January and February, the sales have grown of 130% in comparison to 2008. The most visited portals are Born4shop, Saldi privati, Buyvip, Vente.privée. However Internet is not only a good shop for clothing and electronics as another sector which growing a lot, and allows a comparison of prices, is that of the insurances. On the web there are lots of portals dedicated to policies. In March 6sicuro.it (Assiteca Group) has born, the first site that allows to compare freely the insurance prices for cars and motorcycles of the main 18 insurance Companies. From the data processed by 6sicuro.it (with about 1.700 estimates pro-day) it has come out that the cheapest rate is half the most expensive one. In such a world that grows so quickly it is strategic to be found out, to be known and respected. Since then even product placement has had its own web alter-ego which is called Placement Popularity and it is based on concepts such as brand reputation, link popularity or video placement. These are very cheap instruments that allow to verify the results on time and as consequence the chance to optimize the communication or the product in a very short time.

A curious and innovative operation of product Placement is going to involve a whole city… but not just anyone. In the united States lots of people has perceived the rebirth of their capital thanks to Obama’s arrival. Despite his predecessor, the new President loves living his city: he frequently goes out for dinner, goes to the theatres or to see sport events; he has seriously committed himself to revitalize a metropolis which has never been considered so much by the same Americans. Now there is a big project: a movie by 20^th Century Fox is going to promote an undervalued artistic wealth for the community and the movie producers. The movie’s title is “One night at the Museum, the Battle at Smithsonian’s” and the main character will be Ben Stiller, who had already shooted “One night at the Museum” in 2006, where the museum was the one of natural history in New York. In this movie, besides the museums and the Smithsonian (well-known thanks to the serial “Bones”), you can admire a fantastic view of the city (as the Lincoln Memorial for ex.), and this should represent a good incentive from a tourist point of view. The movie will be anticipated by a huge promotional campaign on the main newspapers of the East Coast, with a commercial of 30” on the broadcasts and a series of agreements with the Sponsors of the project. Among these, the United Airlines that, besides being present within the movie, has created a special promotion for the flights to the capital, as well as the Grand Hyatt and other tour operators that have committed themselves to invite and welcome the tourists to celebrate the rebirth of Washington DC. Other amounts of money come from big Companies such as Kraft and other breakfast cereals Producers, that will associate the placement in the movie to a special kit that will be offered to all the tourists coming to visit the capital.

 For the promotion of its new product, Ominia HD, Samsung has decided to challenge the youtube community to find out how the main character can make disappear its mobile. The video, that you can watch here, does not contain any digital effect or CGI.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX8iVo5vc8o

Such a genial and innovative way to promote the new product has been soon frustrated by the intuition of a subscriber that has been able to solve the problem in 10 days, thus interrupting the game and the gossip, soon born again from its ashes such as a Arabian bird. We do not have to be amazed as maybe even this is part of the placement popularity project.

The technique employed is in fact the same of a scene in Terminator 2 (visibile on this link from the 7th minute). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZACpZzhFt8

The idea is very simple: the glass is just feigned, a cameraman (you never see) is filming the scene while a person is in front of the main character repeating each of his movement.A simple and cheap idea that attracts the navigator to watch the video more than once to understand and find out the solution.It’s worthy to say that since its publication, on April the 7th, 2009, the promo has got 550165 complete visits.

p.latini@oratorio.biz

The Economic crisis that has involved the press and TV editors of Great Britain is contributing to push up the “normalisation” of product placement activities in the United Kingdom. The Hollywood Reporter relates about the drastic solutions that the important and historical English channel ITV is going to adopt to survive. First of all the freezing of the managers’ salaries with a contract superior to 60.000 pounds a year. However, according to the general director of ITV, Ruper Howell, the rise and first of all the survival of the channel, pass through a well-planned product placement programme, for which he asks for a precise body of legislation to the government that could allow the editors to profit this new source of income. A few days ago only I spoke about the controversies in Parlament and now a negative event is going to turn into a positive solution.This new opportunity will defend the subscriber, though the biggest difficuties seem not to be ethic, so clear to everybody, but the inexperience both of editors as well as of the sponsors will provoke a few scrapes that only time and a good law will help to solve.

p.latini@oratorio.biz

Lots of people wonder about product placement and how to distinguish between a real artistic choice of the director or a necessity of the screenplay. Most of the times this distinction is impossible as the two alternatives coincide.

Let’s imagine a movie in which the director has to furnish the house of two lawyers in New York. He will need a lot of furniture, fashion and design accessories. The simplest and easiest thing would be to address to a good product placement agency that could have as Clients furniture Companies. In this way he could have all that he needs without any cost and choosing what he wants….. The alternative would be to find out an artbuyer (in Italy we call him/her “trovarobe”) and pay his/her account as well as the necessary products for the movie. This is the best kind of product placement, the one for artistic choice. An option that even in Italy, nowadays thansk to a rule, is allowed. In other situations product placement becomes unavoidable. This can be referred to some products that have become icons. The famous magazine Variety has recently cited one case referred to Bride Wars (La mia Miglior Nemica). A comedy produced and directed by Kate Hudson with Anne Hathaway, a story of friendship and marriage that has not really thrilled the chief editor Todd Mccarty who has however quoted, in his article, the case of product placement about Budweiser, the national american beer that in the movie, as well as in the real life, has become an elegant and sophisticated (.. don’t ask me why!) drink. According to the journalist this example becomes necessary to describe a contest and underline a real tendency. Difficult and impossible to get to know if this product placement has been credit of a good agency that has been able to propose itself to the right production or just a necessity of the product itself by the movie production. But exactly this uncertainty is the factor that defines the quality of our job

p.latini@oratorio.biz

The Americans love statistics, they get them very seriously and employ them at work. During the first months of the year especially, when it is the moment to sum up dates and numbers, the statistics are very important and impressive. Some of them are really very useful to plan and/or modify our own actions. In our case I have found very interesting the list of the top ten news web sites visited in the States. The reason is simple: to know the sources through which people get informed gives us the chance to better select the channel to obtain much more visibility. Product Placement rendering gets obviously improved when news are rightly conveyed. Hereunder ten web sites not to lose after obtaining a product placement in a Hollywood Production:

p.latini@oratorio.biz