I’ve been fascinated for quite a few years now by the relationship between reality and fiction. Taking around half a dozen undergrad classes whose subjects were some variation of postmodern literature has a tendency to do that to a guy, I suppose. Marketing happens to be a fertile ground for investigations of this type, mostly because of the industry’s reputation as the type of industry that wouldn’t exactly be opposed to blurring the lines of the truth in order to make a sale (see, for example, Seth Godin’s book All Marketers Are Liars, for a prime example of both a catchy title and of the conventional wisdom on the field.)
As you might expect, Rob Walker is all over this type of thing. Stuart Elliot, as regular readers of this blog might have realized, is a common destination for my own reading, so I’m fairly certain I would have stumbled upon this article anyway, but Walker pointed me in the right direction and added a nuance of understanding. But first things first. Here’s Elliot on the increasing popularity of products which are created for the purposes of marketing, and the expression this finds Spanish-language telenovelas:
Such inclusion, known as branded entertainment or branded integration, is becoming increasingly popular as marketers seek to counter the ability of viewers to zip through or zap commercials. Now, the Spanish-language broadcast network Telemundo is expanding the concept by signing licensing deals with manufacturers to develop products that can be integrated into programming like telenovelas — the over-the-top, prime-time soap operas that are a staple of Hispanic TV.
Telemundo already works with advertisers like Clorox, Ford, Subway, T-Mobile and Toyota on branded-entertainment projects that include their products in telenovelas and other shows. The new deals will create products that would not otherwise exist for viewers to buy.
The first products will be jewelry, made by the Richline Group, a unit of Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company, which is to be worn in an episode of the telenovela “El Clon” (“The Clone”) to be broadcast on Telemundo at 8 p.m. on April 22. The jewelry is already available for sale on the Telemundo Web site (telemundo.com).
I love Walker’s one-line analysis: “These are products developed specifically to be sold through integration — created to be defictionalized.”
Obviously, I’m a fan of this type of thought from a conceptual perspective. But is it effective marketing?
That, I’m not so sure about. This approach really turns the normal equation on its head: marketing is (maybe was) about communicating value about something, and that value normally is (was?) something independent of its marketability. Here, the value of the Richline jewelry is that it is marketable. I’m not sure that this is a strategy that is sustainable. When the media of marketing change–and it seems certain that they will, if the last ten years are any indication–then there’s nothing that makes this line of jewelry special.
I’m reminded of a great article from a January 2009 The New Yorker called The Cobra: Inside a Movie Marketer’s Playbook, written by Tad Friend. The article, as is to be expected from The New Yorker, may have a higher word count than the entire content of this blog (OK, that’s a slight exaggeration) but it’s worth every minute. Here’s the money quote, about the business of movies:
One of the oldest jokes in the business is that when a studio head takes over he’s given three envelopes, the first of which contains the advice “Fire the head of marketing.” Nowadays, though, former marketers, such as Oren Aviv, at Disney, and Marc Shmuger, at Universal, often run the studios. “Studios now are pimples on the ass of giant conglomerates, ” one studio’s president of production says. “So at green-light meetings it’s a bunch of marketing and sales guys giving you educated guesses about what a property might gross. No one is saying, ‘This director was born to make this movie.’ “
Marketing is great. It really is. I love reading, thinking, and writing about it. But I’m worried that we lose something when a product’s marketability is the main determining factor in the development of the project. Is this something that inevitable? When you’re planning new services or products, what role does marketability play in the planning and implementation processes?
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