‘Revenge’ Teams With Target & Neiman Marcus For Product Integration Episode
On November 11, viewers of the ABC primetime soap will see original interstitials with cast members in the retailers’ new holiday fashion collection. Instead of the usual ads, Target and Neiman Marcus will be the sole sponsors of the entire hour of Revenge that Sunday night, ABC announced today. All network ad space will feature the content incorporating Target/Neiman Marcus clothes. Only local affiliate ad space will feature other advertisers.
This is the first time ABC has entered into this kind of product integration agreement with a dual sponsor that involves series’ talent in the sponsorship messages via product integration interstitials. But it’s not the first time a network has tried a product integration approach in an attempt to overcome the ad-skipping tendencies of DVR users. In 2009, Fox’s 24 had a season-long integration with Hyundai featuring Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer behind the wheel of a Genesis. During Ben Silverman’s reign, NBC used integration on shows like Friday Night Lights (NBC’s Sunday NFL games, Under Armour sportswear and Applebee’s), Heroes (Nissan and Sprint), Chuck (Subway) and the Knight Rider reboot (Ford). Not everyone takes product integration so seriously. Since its 2006 debut, 30 Rock has made mocking TV networks’ attempts at product integration a consistent theme in its shows.
I’ve thought they needed to do this for a long time, in the 50′s and 60′s whole variety shows were sponsored by one sponsor, and if you integrate the product or store in the show dvr skipping is useless.
Target and Neiman-Marcus are hard to say in the same sentence.
This is an interesting effort obviously intended to hit the broadest spectrum of the Revenge audience. Hope there is some qualified (not pr bullshit) data made public to determine the reach, impact and response from the viewers to these retailers.
Why the fuck would they pick the one high-end department store with no presence in either Manhattan or the Hamptons?!?!
And yes, I know Bergdorf’s is NM, but that probably won’t mean anything for the purposes of this…
It’s about time. Ever since the show started people have been adoring the female cast’s attire, especially Victoria and Emily. Back in the 80′s Nolan Miller had a whole collection based on Dynasty’s wardrobe.
This ad campaign was genius. I usually dvr all my shows and fast forward through the commercials, but because this ad had the characters in it from the show, I initially thought it was part of the show. And because it was a mini mystery, I watched every one to see what would happen at the end. Great job!