Today's USA Today featured an article that is all about how the Gillette brand is going to sponsor a new show called "Fast Cars and Superstars: Gillette Young Guns Celebrity Race" that is an entire show based on the idea of product placement. The show will be on ABC, which carefully decided whether or not the show was going to be effective entertainment and not just a long infomercial for the brand and NASCAR.
The current traditional advertising of Gillette features several young NASCAR drivers, including Carl Edwards and Ryan Newman, that will now be the stars of the ABC show. In each episode, they will train celebrities how to drive cars (covered in the typical NASCAR branding) and eventually how to participate in time-trials. The article compared the show concept to that of "Dancing with the Stars" except with fast cars instead of ballroom dancing.
Because NASCAR already has so many brands associated with it and people are used to seeing their favorite drivers and cars plastered in ads, this show seems like it will work without being too "in your face." Much like the movie Talladega Nights which I wrote about earlier on in this blog, viewers may not even realize so many brands are being shown to them during each episode.
The concept of creating a show around a brand really isn't new since that is how soap operas got their start. It has, however, started to become much more popular as an adaptation to the change in traditional media viewing, etc.
Some other brands that also are trying out the show producing arena are Toyota, Axe, and Bombardier Recreational Products.
It will be interesting to see how many viewers the show can generate. My prediction would be quite a few since NASCAR is so popular and people are still in to reality based television. Good for Gillette!
To read the article, click here!
The current traditional advertising of Gillette features several young NASCAR drivers, including Carl Edwards and Ryan Newman, that will now be the stars of the ABC show. In each episode, they will train celebrities how to drive cars (covered in the typical NASCAR branding) and eventually how to participate in time-trials. The article compared the show concept to that of "Dancing with the Stars" except with fast cars instead of ballroom dancing.
Because NASCAR already has so many brands associated with it and people are used to seeing their favorite drivers and cars plastered in ads, this show seems like it will work without being too "in your face." Much like the movie Talladega Nights which I wrote about earlier on in this blog, viewers may not even realize so many brands are being shown to them during each episode.
The concept of creating a show around a brand really isn't new since that is how soap operas got their start. It has, however, started to become much more popular as an adaptation to the change in traditional media viewing, etc.
Some other brands that also are trying out the show producing arena are Toyota, Axe, and Bombardier Recreational Products.
It will be interesting to see how many viewers the show can generate. My prediction would be quite a few since NASCAR is so popular and people are still in to reality based television. Good for Gillette!
To read the article, click here!
1 comment:
10 points for the week
Post a Comment