This blog is brought to you by Sprint
“I have a blog topic for you,” said my friend Tiff. “It’s not the normal topic for you, but it’s so ridiculous that it must be blogged about.”
She was referring to the recent proliferation of Sprint into her guilty pleasure, ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.” Sprint recently partnered with the network to produce a series of integrated ads that run alongside the show as a sponsored spin-off series, “Another Desperate Housewife.” The mini-series’ story line consists of a housewife, her cheating husband and her best friend/betrayer — and how each uses Sprint to conspire against the others. We’ll cut to the good stuff:
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The actual tagline: “This is betrayal… on the Now Network.” Or in Tiff’s words, “Are you a cheating whore? Grab a Sprint phone!”
This is hardly new for Sprint. The cellular company also teamed up with my guilty geeky pleasure, NBC’s “Heroes,” to develop a webisode series called “Slow Burn,” about a woman with superpowers who contacts her long lost daughter (also with superpowers) by sending photo texts through her Sprint phone.
The ad peeps are calling it a revolution. Adweek explains the new trend in brand integration as a way to combat the “increasing challenges in DVR penetration.” (Sounds naughty!) By creating a program that is seamless with the tone and style of the show, Sprint hopes to capture viewers’ attention and keep them from fast forwarding through their commercial. Ad Age points out the slight risk in developing a promotion that is so closely tied to one show — the commercials can’t air anywhere else other than the show for which they are designed.
Many experts are saying that these types of commercial spin-offs will continue to grow as networks and advertisers devise even more seamless and shameless ways to shill products. According to Adweek, Sprint is quite happy with the results so far, and we may be seeing more outlandish sponsored series soon.
(Maybe a Sprint-sponsored “Mad Men”? Imagine the look of revulsion on Matthew Weiner’s face…)
One thing you won’t be seeing is the now canceled “Family Guy” episode sponsored by Microsoft. The half-hour special was to embed Microsoft Windows 7 content directly into the plot, but Microsoft backed out when they realized that the show would contain “riffs on deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest” and were not a “fit with the Windows brand.” Of the several thousand people that work at Microsoft, has not one seen “Family Guy?” It was probably for the best anyway, considering this trailer:
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The question remains: how effective is brand integration into television? Although Microsoft has yet to figure out, as for Sprint… well, their June 2009 commercial on the Palm Pre didn’t exactly inspire a blog post, did it? You see, though my good friend may despise “Another Desperate Housewife,” she recalled the plot, Sprint’s involvement and the tagline with ease — short of putting the phone in her hand, Sprint couldn’t ask for more. I admittedly always stop fast forwarding on the DVR when I see “Slow Burn” come on “Heroes,” no matter how cheesy I think it is. To that effect, I would say Sprint is doing an outstanding job of reaching its audience. But we’ll see if that translates to phone sales. (Sorry Sprint, the iPhone had me at hello.)
At the risk of exposing just how few people read my blog, let’s take an informal poll:
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