Advertising in Television Shows, The New Innovation?

 The documentary The Persuaders discusses the many ways that advertising agencies try to grasp the public's attention and how they succeed in doing it. One concept that the company Madison and Vine developed. The documentary explains that Madison and Vine was created from an alliance between New York's Ad Man and Hollywood Studios. Not only would this alliance spark a brilliant idea for the company Absolut Vodka, but would also spark the idea for many other ad agencies in the near future. With the addition TiVo and DVR to many TV systems, ad agencies are scrambling for new ways to be innovative such as incorporating ads into their television shows.

Taken by MK Feeney

HBO and Absolut Vodka discussed the idea of creating a fictional brand in the HBO television series Sex And The City. This brand would be featured in an episode, where the brand would be called Absolut Hunk. Both of the companies did well after the episode aired, HBO got to feature a brand and Absolut Vodka showed their brand to its key demographic which was the "upscale and glamorous."

The documentary then continues and explains that there are many different agencies that read multiple movie scripts and find the space to add space for advertising things such as food, cars and other amenities. For example the show Modern Family. In the show Modern Family, there is an episode that was shot completely on IPhone and IPad. This was not only an innovative approach for a television show but also gave Apple tons of air time, but also to show the many interesting features of using any Apple product.

I did find the section on advertisements being incorporated in television shows, quite interesting. I found it interesting because unlike some versions of product placement, the television incorporating of advertisements is a new way to show the consumer how useful the product is and does not over glamorize as well. This is also a way to gear towards certain audiences as well.  Even though this technique has been used since the late 90's I feel that it has worked well and should be embraced by all advertising companies. 

The examples of these TV shows are only the beginning. Spanning from comedies to dramas, many different television shows have tried this idea of incorporating advertisements into shows. Which brings to question who will find the newest innovation to catch the public’s attention?