Behind TV: What’s in a Brand?
06 December 07
As television advertising remains in the doldrums, Matthew Bell examines the burgeoning world of TV Sponsorship.
Five
Like TV shows, sponsorship 'bumpers' – the shorts that top and tail a programme – are a matter of personal taste.
Jamie Oliver famously divides audiences, yet Sainsbury’s recruited him to front its “Try something new today” sponsorship of ITV Drama Premieres. The Bounty chocolate 'bumpers' were almost certainly for some the most memorable thing about ITV’s reality show Love Island.
Programme sponsorship is less than two decades old but, reckons Channel 4's deputy head of sponsorship Rob Ramsey, viewers are highly marketing-literate. “They understand that sponsorship is different to advertising and how it works, and they feel very warm towards that sponsor if it’s one of their favourite programmes,” he says.
But what can sponsorship do for a brand? Ramsey offers the textbook case of traditional Christmas drink Baileys' involvement with the sassy US series Sex And The City. “It subsumed the programme's brand values. Baileys was perceived as old and downmarket; now it’s seen as fashionable,” says Ramsey.
Love it or loathe it, sponsorship is increasingly important to broadcasters, especially when traditional TV advertising is in the doldrums and likely to remain there.
Last year, ITV's sponsorship revenues grew by 36%. Its main ITV1 channel now airs 130 sponsored shows a year, many of which are highly lucrative: furniture retailer Harveys is paying ITV £20m over two years to sponsor Coronation Street. The products vary from comparethemarket.com, sponsors of drama on C4 to car company Kia Sportage, behind “US Crime Drama on Five”.
Sponsorship also extends beyond the TV programme. In the current jargon, sponsors are exploiting the full “360 degree opportunity” and promoting their brand on mobile and online versions of shows.
But some brands are now looking to move beyond sponsorship. Advertiser-funded programming, or branded content as it is often termed, is a form of refined sponsorship. Unlike traditional
sponsorship, the advertiser funds or part-funds the programme and is involved in producing content itself.
In the US, branded content dates from the 1930s when washing powder manufacturers such as Colgate-Palmolive funded daytime dramas, giving them their name, thus the soap opera. Here, branded content is still in its infancy. ITV has a couple of branded series, the music show Orange Playlist and Beat: Life On The Street, which is funded by the Central Office of Information and highlights the work of Police Community Support Services.
In the future lies the allure of product placement if the current strict regulations are relaxed…
Niche cable channels such as UKTV Food also air branded content, including the Waitrose-funded Market Kitchen. The channel is able to offer advertisers access to a small audience but, crucially, one that is passionate about food.
C4 is probably the market leader with its sports and music shows such as Vodafone TBA and Transmission With T-Mobile. Last year it aired 144 hours of branded content, although these shows were at the margins of the schedules.
Placing branded content in primetime is trickier. Programmes are more expensive and would require far greater investment from advertisers. Will they take a risk on a series that may bomb with audiences?
In the future lies the allure of product placement if, as expected, the strict regulations that currently govern it are relaxed. Product placement – the showing or mentioning of a product within a programme in return for payment – would be welcomed by ITV.
“We're excited about it. We need to find new revenue streams to support our programme budget,” says ITV head of sponsorship and interactive,Mark Rosenegk. But he says there is much to learn before product placement can be successfully transplanted from the US to the UK.
“We know that Tom Cruise picking up a Diet Coke and saying how lovely it tastes is over the top and wouldn’t work over here. It’s a case of working out how it can work and how flexible it can be. We’re writing scripts for Coronation Street and other dramas some 12-15 months in advance, so the question is will advertisers work through that process?” says Rosenegk.
“You've also got to work out how you measure its value. How do you charge advertisers for the use of a Jeep Cherokee in The Bill? Can you charge more because it’s featured in a car chase rather than being parked on the side of the road?”
A clue as to how product placement could work on UK television is provided by the online Bebo show Kate Modern, which is the UK’s take on the YouTube hit Lonelygirl15. Because the internet is not subject to media regulator Ofcom's rules, the show’s advertisers pay to be written into its storylines.
But not all sponsorship deals are matches made in heaven. The racism and bullying of Shilpa Shetty that marked last year's Celebrity Big Brother led to its sponsor, The Carphone Warehouse, severing its relationship with the C4 show.
Having walked out of the Big Brother house, the mobile phone firm signed up as the new sponsor of ITV’s The X Factor in the summer – and found itself embroiled in another row when finalist Emily Nakanda was forced to quit after being caught on video assaulting another girl. In future, perhaps it should avoid reality shows.
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