TV's New Teen Drama Gives Starring Role to Coke --- What $6 Million Can Buy: Soft Drink Is Everywhere In WB's Prep-School Saga
by Joe Flint
The Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2000

A good-looking kid glistens with sweat as he pedals his mountain bike into a filling station. He pulls two ice-cold bottles of Coca-Cola out of a cooler in slow motion, takes a long drink, flirts with the pretty attendant and then heads on down the highway -- leaving one of the Cokes behind.

Sounds like the latest corny commercial for the Real Thing? Well, it is, sort of. It's the opening scene of "Young Americans," a new television series making its debut on Time Warner Inc.'s WB Network tonight. And guess who the biggest sponsor is.

In one of television's broadest and most blatant advertising gambits in recent years, Coca-Cola Co. has committed millions of dollars to saturate the fledgling drama with commercials and product placement. When "Young Americans," an hourlong weekly series about teens at an elite small-town prep school, starts its eight-week run tonight, viewers may be hard-pressed to figure out where the drama ends and the product-pitching begins.

People familiar with the agreement between the WB Network and Coca-Cola say it calls for Coke to spend roughly $6 million on soft-drink advertising during the show, product placement and local promotions, including a sweepstakes with Loews' Cineplex Entertainment Corp., offering movie patrons who buy a Coke the chance to go to Los Angeles to meet the "Young Americans" cast.

As a "title sponsor," Coke gets at least three commercials in each episode of "Young Americans," plus a mention in every ad WB runs for the new show; the ads call the show "a Coca-Cola summer premiere." Coke products will often appear next to the acne-free teens populating WB programs. But Coke gets no script approval, a WB spokesman says, nor has it been guaranteed a minimum number of product appearances.

For Coke, the deal marks a new level of advertising intensity. "We're taking the shackles off in terms of innovation and marketing," says Jeff Dunn, senior vice president of marketing for Coca-Cola North America.

The soft-drink company's previous management, including former chairman M. Douglas Ivester, had a "self-limiting approach," Mr. Dunn says, and wasn't interested in working Hollywood ties to promote the brand. Coke's new chairman, Douglas Daft, has been pushing its marketing department to move faster and stay more attuned to youth.

Standing out from all the advertising noise was a major reason for the far-reaching sponsorship. With the networks continuing to increase the number of commercials on their shows, and viewers flipping the dial more than ever, TV advertisers feel they need to pull out all the stops to be heard. "Every little bit helps us punch through," says Mr. Dunn. "If you're just buying spots, you have the channel-surfer effect."

Time Warner's WB Network initiated the deal through Coke's ad agency, McCann-Erickson, a unit of Interpublic Group. "We started talking three years ago about finding a way to do something different," says Jed Petrick, executive vice president of media sales at the network. Coke "is in a tough business and both of us are looking for an edge in the summer." Without the Atlanta soft-drink company's commitment, "Young Americans" would be collecting dust on a shelf, WB says: Each episode costs about $1.2 million to produce. "Coke got us on the road to be able to afford this show," Mr. Petrick says.

Indeed, the sponsorship is a throwback to television's early days, when advertisers financed shows in return for advertising exclusivity. In some cases, advertisers paid production costs and even developed the shows themselves: Think of NBC's "Colgate Theatre" and "Texaco Star Theater." The practice had stopped for the most part by the 1960s, but it is now making a comeback as networks and studios look for creative ways to cover rising programming costs.

Last year, Sony Corp.'s Columbia TriStar Television struck a deal with retailer American Eagle Oufitters Inc. to supply wardrobes for the cast of the WB drama "Dawson's Creek." Viacom Inc.'s CBS network sold its hit reality show "Survivor" to eight advertisers including General Motors and Reebok International with promises of exclusive product placement. Artists Television Group, the TV arm of Michael Ovitz's new production company, is looking for similar product tie-ins for its new Wall Street drama, "The $treet," which airs on News Corp.'s Fox network this fall.

Similarly, Kmart Corp. is sponsoring MTV's Monday night show, "Road Rules," to get its Route 66 denim brand on the air and on the show's cast members. A commercial airing during the show features the cast members promoting the jeans.

Recognizable brand names do add a dose of reality to TV shows: NBC's "Seinfeld" was full of real products -- Snapple, Junior Mints -- and they were often major elements in the plot line. "If you're going to tell a story that takes place in contemporary America, it should be plastered with product placement," says Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television.

But in "Seinfeld," the product placement wasn't paid for by advertisers but originated with the show's writers. The concern is that when paid product placements start driving the content, they go too far. "When the very content of these shows starts to be determined ahead of time by the people sponsoring it, that takes it to a different level," Mr. Thompson says. "I'm not sure it is something we want to celebrate."

By associating itself so closely with "Young Americans," Coke risks facing a backlash if the show becomes controversial. Like most WB dramas, "Young Americans" is full of scantily clad teenagers with raging hormones. In the first episode, one student has a fling with a local girl who, he later learns, may be his half-sister; another student at the all-boys school turns out to be a girl, a la "Boys Don't Cry." Coke says executives have seen the pilot and had no problems with any of the content.

Coke also isn't worried that the very kids it is trying to reach will be turned off by the unabashed effort to make the show a marketing vehicle. "Teens actually expect it," says Coke's Mr. Dunn. "As long as the content is real and authentic, they're cool. They've moved from cynical to savvy."

Still, both the WB and Coke promise that the heavy dose of product placement in the first episode won't be the norm. "We want to be integrated naturally into `Young Americans,' " Mr. Dunn says.

"The premiere is by far and away as far as it gets," agrees WB's Mr. Petrick. "Coke was very adamant about not having too much exposure in the show, and I venture to bet it will be more toned down as we go on."

Of course, even an effort as smooth as Coke's isn't without complications: The WB had to digitally remove a Pepsi machine that popped up on a location shoot in the first episode.