Anton Leo, head of comedy for the CBC, describes an episode of the network’s comedy series Little Mosque on the Prairie scheduled to air during the upcoming season wherein a new character arrives in the show’s small-town setting and makes a trip to the local bank to check on his finances.
This, in itself, is hardly exciting–visiting the bank is about as mundane a task as one could imagine–but comedy is based on conflict, and conflict often arises from quirky characters navigating ordinary situations. And Leo is banking that the scene will generate laughs.
While the creative talent behind Little Mosque, not to mention its viewers, will judge the scene based on its comedic value, another stakeholder will evaluate it on entirely different terms. That’s because the bank the character visits isn’t a generic no-name branch or a fictional creation. It is, in fact, a TD Canada Trust location, and it’s branded explicitly as such. Moreover, the scene goes beyond convenient background placement of the TD name, logo and colours. In this case, the bank has actually been written into the script.
The integration represents a new frontier in Canadian television, and TD Canada Trust, the CBC and onlookers from throughout the media world will be watching intently to gauge the value of such an endeavour.
Sponsorship has been a part of television programming since the medium’s inception, but as the decades have passed, brands have been insinuated ever deeper into shows. In recent years, for example, advertisers have become a part of the physical sets of reality programs–witness the prominent placement of Coca-Cola cups and TD’s green chair on Canadian Idol broadcasts. Now, in an effort to capture the attention of an audience fragmented by multiple entertainment options and capable of fast-forwarding through commercials, marketers have entered what was once unthinkable territory: scripted television.
“I grew up in a world where church and state were very distinct, and that line has obviously been blurred a little bit,” says Bruce Claassen, chairman of Aegis Media Canada and CEO of Genesis- Vizeum Inc. “The fact that the CBC would be going into that arena is interesting, because you would think that if any of the networks would be holding the church and state policy reasonably stringently, it would be the CBC.
“But clearly they’re seeing opportunities to change that.” Indeed, TD’s integration into Little Mosque is just one of several integration opportunities the network and its advertisers have brought to fruition for the upcoming television season. The bank has been written into episodes of hour-long CBC dramas Being Erica and Heartland, while Kraft and Quality Street chocolates have also been integrated into Little Mosque. The Kraft integration hinges on the fictional town of Mercy, home to the Little Mosque characters, entering the Kraft Hockeyville promotion. For Quality Street–which also sponsors Coronation Street on CBC–the Little Mosque writers developed a scene wherein the characters eat the chocolates while watching an episode of the British show.
“We were hunting for a more engaging way to get the brand across in addition to buying :30s,” says D’Arcy McDonald, associate vice-president, global brand marketing for TD Canada Trust. “We were pushing Mediacom at the time [TD has since replaced the media agency with Starcom] to help us be a little bit more innovative, and when the CBC hinted that they would be receptive to doing something, we were excited about pursuing it.”
But will viewers be excited about brands moving in for this kind of in-show closeup? McDonald doesn’t expect any sort of revolt.
“We have 10 million customers across the country, so on a daily basis our brand plays some role in their lives,” he says. “It shouldn’t be intrusive by any means.” Scott Moore, head of media sales and marketing for CBC, also believes audiences will accept and even appreciate the presence of advertisers within the shows, saying today’s viewers are “sophisticated” enough to understand that such integration is going to be a natural part of television production moving forward.
But as much as he believes in the concept, Moore understands that too much of it could compromise the creative integrity of the programming. Explaining that the CBC doesn’t want its shows to become “too commercialized,” Moore says the network closed the doors on any further integrations into Little Mosque this year after TD, Kraft and Quality Street.
He also knows that, in addition to being rare, marriages of creative content and advertising messages must be handled gently. “It’s got to be done carefully and not in a way that’sover the top,” says Moore. “If you do it properly, if you spread it out and integrate it into the scripts well enough, I think it has success written all over it for the client.” Doing it properly, according to those involved on both the advertising and creative side, means getting in at ground level. Moore says marketers looking to enter the scripted-content arena must respect the long lead times associated with TV production.
“In some cases, the scripts are developed eight to 10 months before the show airs, and the shooting process is four to six months ahead,” he explains. “If you don’t respect those timelines, [integration] is either impossible to do or you’re trying to force things in at the last minute.
“We haven’t done anything that could be defined as forcing it into the program.”
Not forcing things is also critical when it comes to enlisting the support of the creative teams behind the shows. The CBC’s Leo says TD, Mediacom and the network’s marketing and sales team handled the situation the right way.
“There was no friction with the folks at Little Mosque,” he says. “We got approached by marketing and sales fairly early in our script development process. Once we got a sense of what that meant, that [TD] was looking for an integration, I went to the executive producers and talked about the idea.
It was decided that it would be relatively effortless to make one of the things the character needed to do be a check on his finances.”
Leo also points out that while TD briefed the show’s writers on its brand, supplied general feedback on integration ideas and ensured the scene was accurate in its presentation of banking practices, when it came down to actually writing the scripts, “We were never in a room with TD.”
McDonald reinforces Leo’s claim. “We were very hands-off in the creative process,” he says. “It was absolutely under CBC’s control. Which is the exciting part, although it’s also the nerve-wracking part.”
What makes marketers anxious about this kind of integration is that it requires them to loosen the reins on their own brand, a decision that runs counter to conventional marketing wisdom.
“Anyone doing this sort of thing has to understand that all parties who come to the table have to be willing to relinquish some control,” says Anthony Hello, account director at Mediacom. “For scripted integrations to work well, there’s an understanding that it has to be a collaborative process.”
In addition to learning how to make such integrations happen from a creative standpoint, media agencies are also being challenged to come up with a blueprint for buying this non-traditional form of advertising. While Hello won’t share what TD paid to be woven into the CBC shows, he suggests that the pricing structure was tied to the bank’s more traditional involvement, such as conventional brand ad buys and promo spots involving actors sitting in TD’s green chair.
“There’s certainly no hard and fast rules that govern the valuing of this sort of plan,” says Hello. “We look at individual properties and the audiences they deliver and how much content we’re receiving in those properties, and we look at what that shakes out to in relation to a 30-second spot.”
Viewers can expect to see more and more of this kind of integration in the future, in part because the 30-second spot isn’t worth quite what it used to be. “Smart marketers are looking for all number of ways to be integrated into what broadcasters are doing, because [integration] does stand out, it is TiVo-proof and it is more organic,” says Moore.
Even Claassen, as mindful as he is about the bygone days of church-state separation, doesn’t have a problem with what he calls an “inevitable evolution” toward scripted integration. “Subtlety is the name of the game, and my guess is that the CBC will be relatively subtle,” he says. “If it doesn’t disturb the narrative, then why not?”
To put it another way–as Leo does–TV characters are just like the rest of us in their need to eat, be entertained and do ordinary stuff like visit the bank. Increasingly, they’ll be getting these products and services from brands viewers recognize.
