During the next fall-winter TV season the Americans will watch the first season of “Chase”, the story of a marshall from Texas, specialized in chasing fugitives escaped from prison. Besides the plot (which seems to be interesting), there are other elements that make us understand the quality of the project. For example the producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, the man who more than others has realised one success after the other, such as the “CSI” (Las Vegas, New York, Miami), “Cold Case”, “without any trace” and many others. Another aspect is the distribution. For the first time with this project, Bruckheimer has been able to sell his product to NBC. A logical choice after so many successful serials for just one channel as CBS (“Dark Blue” and “The Whole Truth” for example). Meaningful for the Americans is even the title of the serial: Richard Chase infact was known as “the vampire from Sacramento”, a horrible serial killer that in few months killed 6 persons, drinking their blood and eating their bodies. Thankfully now there will be Jesse Metcalf, the main character, to free us from such concerns.

Let’s talk again about next TV season in the States to see what’s news. Let’s start from the first season of Mr Sunshine, with the coming back of Matthew Perry. Even if he has worked a lot after “Friends” (even as producer and playwright), it is quite sure that the sit-com genre is more suitable to the unforgettable Chandler. In the new project, produced by the trustful Greenlighted, he is quite a normal 40-years businessman at the San Diego Stadium that begins to think about his life. At his side the nice and beautiful Andrea Anders (Better of Ted, The Class, Joey…), the quite famous Allison Janney (154 episodes in The West Wing) and Nate Torrence (a young character actor). As other new serials, the mood of this production is light but no trivial, as it proposes a sort of revisitation os some life values, with nice and light spots. The set is New York and the shooting will begin in 3 weeks. You have really a few time.

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.

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

You don’t hear talking about “iCarly” very often among marketing managers. On the contrary teen-agers do. A video, among the many present on youtube, has got more than 13 millions of visits, but it isn’t so difficult to find others with such numbers. In Italy it is on Nickelodeon and gets lots of fans. Its website works seriously: the blog is very popular, the visitors are many and the sell-out of its soundtrack is optimum. The story is about a young girl from Seattle that becomes a web star thanks to a web-casting. The production is sober but with taste, good dialogues, nice rhythm and nice actors. Nothing new or experimental but it has the advantage to be always updated. The plot, the speeches, the actors’ look and the set have a perfect equilibrium between what there was (and we are fed up) and what will be (not too much in advance). In a few days in the Los Angeles Studios the 4^th season will start to be shot. 26 episodes already on programme are really a lot in comparison to other web serials. Good sign of a consolidated success on one side and of a good economic rendering for the production on the other. For placement activity it is important to go on now. The products interested are those connected to teen-agers between 12 and 17 years old.

Very soon you will pay to shoot in New York a movie, a serial, a show or just a spot. The major Blooberg told this officially sometime ago during a meeting with The Hollywood Studios, the ads Agencies and the Show Workmen Union. For the Big Apple and the United States it is an important turning point from a normative as well economic point of view. The amount is quite a symbol, 300 dollars una tantum that the productions of serials and movies should pay at the beginning of the season and before the setting of the location, regardless of the hours and the days to spend in New York.

Obviously the “once-fee movie” will be required just in case of public occupation of the ground, that this year will regard about 3000 productions. To manage the operations will be the “Film Office”, born in 1966 to promote the city, became the city-placement case of the world movie story (maybe together with Bombay).

Different and more articolated is the case of the Movie Commission in Italy and Europe, an instrument of management, promotion and incoming, run with no coordination at all. On the other side of the Ocean, the Show Businessmen bet that just Los Angeles and Las Vegas will survive. The economies of the two cities are so independent from the Show world to make fun with the producers humor that would find much more convenient to move the productions and the investments in other districts, such as Vancouver, quite often employed, or Bollywood, where Spielberg has bee working for a year.

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 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.

The product placement should grow up at the same time with the “Placement Planner”: the professional figure (adviser or agency) that studies any possible occasion for product placement, analyses, evalues and proposes them to his/her clients on the base of their profile, budget and aim. Well the bad news is that in Italy this does not happen as the Placement Planner does not exist. Really the chances to plan placements within shows, serials, movies, clips and videogames both in Italy as well abroad are concrete…it is only managed in quite an uncoordinated way, sometimes just supported by a PR activity or a few more. No structure is able to gather all the placement possibilities to propose them in a well-integrated planning of product placement that can use more productions as well more means. The other evening I was watching the Olympic Games and above all the curling game between Swiss and Danemark. Continue Reading

 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

Last Thursday the big Clear Channel Radio officially opened a new platform of advertising strategy, able to broadcast the spots in the best way. The idea is not completely new, they admitted to have copied it from Google, that has been using the method for years. In fact when you put a word to look for, on your right a few ads appear, connected to the word itself for sense or logic (for ex. if you write “house”, there appear some real estate agencies). Google, on its hand, had copied the idea from the “right key” by Microsoft that helps you to get other possible functions in that moment. The logic of the process is winning and it’s the same employed by product placement. When planning projects within movies or TV serials (as well as Videogames or music Videos), it is necessary to trace a profile of the best testimonial, comparing its affinities to the available productions and only after this it is possible to decide if the placement is worthwhile or not. At least this should be the right way…and this is what Clear Channel has done, clearly in competition with the product placement. Happily this is possible only for the radio that until now has not been object of product placement for different reasons, both technical as well legal. The project that has been studied and tested for a year , has been applied by Clear Channel to the new album by AC/DC. On the 91 stations when some rock songs were played, at the end or after 30 seconds maximum, the spot about their CD was broadcasted. The results of such a strategy were incredible: only in the first week 784.000 copies of the CD have been sold. It is the second best result of 2009 in the USA. This means that to approach a product to its ideal contest, even in a very reduced temporal place, is the winning idea. And this is exactly what product placement does every day.