March 12th, 2003
Altered Reality
By Stuart Elliott
New York Times
ABC is clambering aboard the bandwagon of networks that allow advertisers to
place products in reality series by signing two major marketers, Schick and
Cingular Wireless, to embed brands in all 13 episodes of a new show, "All
American Girl," which has its premiere tonight.
In the show, which is billed as "a national search for the ultimate all-American
girl," Schick will sponsor segments devoted to examples of "women’s
intuition." The company just so happens to have a new women’s shaver named
Intuition.
Cingular, meanwhile, will plug its mobile telephone and text messaging services
with a variety of placement ploys in the episodes and related sites online.
The placements are the first time that ABC has so intimately involved its sponsors
in a reality series, but they come as the network has significantly increased
its offerings in the genre. ABC’s track record in reality programming so far
has been a mixed one, with hits like "The Bachelor" and "The
Bachelorette" and flops like two newer series "I’m a Celebrity—
Get Me Out of Here!" and "Are You Hot? The Search for America’s Sexiest
People."
Product placements, a staple in the early days of radio as well as TV, are
returning to favor among advertisers and networks. Both the buyers and sellers
of commercial time are eager to find alternate ways to reach an audience at
a time when viewers are increasingly using technology to ignore spots by zipping,
zapping or TiVo-ing them into oblivion.
The marketers and networks are gambling that the benefits of placements will
outweigh the castigation by critics who complain about the blurring of the boundaries
between programming and advertising. Those lines have recently been rendered
fuzzier by reality series like "American Idol" on Fox Broadcasting
and "Survivor" on CBS that are replete with product plugs within the
shows themselves from advertisers like Coca-Cola, Ford Motor, General Motors,
Mars, the Old Navy division of Gap and Reebok International.
"It sounds as if ‘All American Girl’ ought to be named ‘All American Commercialism,’
" said Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert in Portland,
Ore., an organization that opposes what its members see as the overcommercialization
of the media.
"Companies want to stick an ad into every nook and cranny of our lives
and culture," Mr. Ruskin said. His organization recently protested plans
by the General Electric Company to introduce in hospital rooms a network called
the Patient Channel that would carry drug commercials. Mr. Ruskin urged support
for a federal law that would require the disclosure of products placed by advertisers
in television shows, movies, books and video games.
The search for sponsors that would place products in the episodes of "All
American Girl"—which offers viewers a chance to vote for their "dream
girl"—started months ago, as the series was beginning to be developed
by ABC, part of the Walt Disney Company, and 19 Entertainment, a producer of
"American Idol."
"We had an opportunity early on to see if we could turn ‘All American
Girl’ into something bigger for our clients, by figuring out how to organically
get them integrated into the show," said Geri Wang, senior vice president
for prime-time sales at the ABC Television Network division of ABC in New York.
"We don’t want something force-fed that would look amateurish," she
added. "We want the right balance, because it would turn off the viewer
if we had too much in the way of commercial messages."
Schick, which is being sold by Pfizer to Energizer Holdings, and Cingular,
owned by BellSouth and SBC Communications, will also buy commercial time during
the series. Terms of the deals were not disclosed, but are estimated to be in
the low seven figures for each advertiser.
"What we’re trying to get people to understand is how Intuition fits into
the way women deal with their lives today," said Lynne Macchiarulo, brand
manager for Intuition at Schick-Wilkinson Sword in Milford, Conn. The Intuition,
combining razor blades with lather, will be introduced in April.
"We want to get our message out there by getting into female culture,
and being part of television shows is an appropriate way to do that," she
said.
For Schick, "All American Girl" will feature short segments tied
to intuition, which Ms. Macchiarulo described as "women being asked how
they used their intuition or how their intuition led them in a certain direction."
The Intuition brand will be the sponsor of the contestant profiles posted online,
where viewers can use their, yes, intuition, to guess who will win the contest.
The intuition segments are planned to start appearing in episodes of "All
American Girl" next month, so a decision has not been made as to whether
they will actually carry the word with a capital "I" as well as with
a small "i."
The segments evoke the trappings of 1950’s TV, when Revlon, Geritol and other
sponsors affixed their brand logos to the isolation booths, curtains and host
lecterns on quiz shows like "The $64,000 Question" and "Twenty-One."
"We’ve been looking for this type of program for the last 18 months,"
said Charlie Payne, director for media at Cingular in Atlanta.
"We really like the reality genre because we are able to integrate our
products and services in a show," Ms. Payne said, "and because reality
TV is able to establish a quick and loyal following among viewers who come back
week after week."
"The viewers are able to become actively involved, too," she added.
"They’re not just passively watching."
To stimulate that involvement, Cingular customers will be able to take part
in live, on-air polls through text messaging. Cingular will sponsor the voting
line for viewers to choose contestants they like by voice calls or text messaging
calls as well as the voting and polling sites on the ABC Web site (http://www.abc.com).
Also, contestants and members of the staff of "All American Girl"
will use Cingular phones for voice calls and text messages throughout the series.
(Mobliss and AT&T Wireless perform a similar text messaging function for
"American Idol" on Fox.)
Even before the broadcast of the first episode of "All American Girl,"
Ms. Payne said, Cingular is already exploring placements in other shows for
the company’s products and services.
ABC, Ms. Wang said, is also "looking at all our shows, not just the reality
shows, to see where the right fit can occur."
"We’re looking at it with a very critical eye," she added, "to
see what makes sense for the network, the client, the product and the viewer."
Asked if such placements unduly blur the line between content and commercialism,
Ms. Payne of Cingular replied: "That is one opinion, certainly. But I feel
the consumer is much more sophisticated this day and age, able to recognize
the difference."