DailyLions2012-1.pdf

Branded content
CAN BE FUN
GERMANS BELIEVE BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT IS FUN, AND, WHEN
IT’S HARNESSED TO GERMAN PRAGMATISM AND PERFECTIONISM,
THE RESULTS CAN BE IMPRESSIVE. SANDRA FREISINGER-HEINL, OF
BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT ONLINE (BEO) AND MA MEDIA, REPORTS
PRODUCT placement has
been making headlines in
Germany. First there was
the semi-final of the TV
format Germany’s Next
Top Model, which saw model Heidi
Klum present the four finalists with an
Opel Corsa car. And before that there
were the hungry inhabitants of the
jungle camp in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me
Out Of Here!, who were presented with
a treasure box of Pick Up! chocolate bars.
The success of such strategies has been
proved by market research into brand
awareness and readiness-to-buy. Media
agencies are now adapting their
approach to sponsorship in order to
integrate all the parameters into a
campaign. In the meantime, new
evaluation methods for branded
entertainment, such as the Branded
Entertainment Assessment Model
(BEAM) by Ogilvy, have been welcomed
by German marketers and advertisers.
Since April 2010, with the liberalisation
of product placement on German
television, much more has been made
possible beyond mere product supply.
Commercial broadcasters are also
becoming involved. The current market
leader is SevenOne AdFactory, which is
responsible for cross-linked concepts
n The Hasbro Nerf
Blaster featured in
the comedy series
Stromberg,
inspired by the
Ricky Gervais
series The Office
within the ProSiebenSat.1 Group and
which has already completed around 50
placement projects since the relaxation
of the legislation. The view from the RTL
Group is that product placement in
Germany is still in its infancy but that its
early successes indicate a promising
future. “Branded entertainment is
already happening on many levels on all
our TV channels,” says Lars-Eric Mann,
managing director of RTL’s IP
Newmedia. “Most often used are
promotional stories or interactive
competitions. The more logical the
connection between product and
format, the better the success of the
campaign.” Mann’s view is borne out by
a number of recent campaigns. It seems
German viewers prefer a 360-degree
approach to branded entertainment. A
prime example of a successful holistic
campaign that orchestrated events,
social media, advertising, PR and at POS
was Das Perfekte Model on VOX with
hosts and models Eva Padberg and
“
“PRODUCT PLACEMENT IS NOT A
STAND-ALONE SOLUTION FOR US. IT’S
ALWAYS ACCOMPANIED BY OTHER
ADVERTISING FORMS” Petra Kroop
SUNDAY, JUNE 17,2012
GERMANY 19
Karolina Kurkova. Contestants who
succeeded in performing the 10 key
skills of modelling, such as walking
elegantly in high heels, were awarded
Pandora charms. As a result, sales of
Pandora bracelets doubled and charm
sales increased by 50%, according to
Pandora. The campaign was rounded off
by Facebook, a prize competition, POS
initiatives and web videos on jewellery
styling. In the case of the co-operation
between Adam Opel and Germany’s
Next Top Model, market research into
the impact of the show was equally
positive. Opel reported that
“sponsorship in combination with
product placement” had helped it to
“present the Opel Corsa Color Line, a
non-fashion product, attractively and
authentically to a female target group”.
The popular office comedy series
Stromberg featured Hasbro’s NERF
water gun in an amusing way, in the
process marketing the product to a new
demographic: young adults. The show’s
central character, Stromberg, divided his
staff into teams and used NERFs in a
game of chase across desks — a fun idea
that many young offices have gone on to
emulate in reality. The placement of a
well-known dairy company’s rice
pudding in the same show, however,
proved less successful. The pudding,
which triggered heated discussion
whenever it appeared in the action, was
featured far too frequently for many
viewers’ tastes. The rice pudding
controversy proves that there is still work
to be done on clarifying and defining
standards. A production can struggle
when, for example, the tools used in a
DIY soap are reclassified as product
placement, which means that a
contribution from the DIY-tool retailer
not only in equipment for the set but also
in funds for marketing becomes
necessary. A set of guidelines has been
drawn up by the German Producers
Alliance to help its members to negotiate
these new co-operations but, in reality,
much still depends on the power and
leverage of the TV station and
production in question. In the
meantime, everyone is scrambling for a
slice of the branded entertainment pie,
from the media agencies that
traditionally administer their customers’
budgets and the specialised agencies
that work with producers and brands, to
the marketing departments at TV
stations to the production companies
that are actually handling the placement
— and sometimes even the actors who
interact with the product on screen.
Evaluating the size of the market, Petra
Kroop, head of brand integration at
SevenOne AdFactory, reports a deluge of
requests from across the spectrum, “not
only from typical advertising customers
but also from companies that have not
advertised on TV yet”.
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