BK Got it Their Way

I've been talking about product placement in online video as exemplified by Diggnation and other such shows. I think that these unobtrusive ads are going to work best in our new tivo like society. The advertiser pays these content creators a sum to interact with their brands while potential customers watch the characters interact with a brand and possibly drive themselves to want that same product. This works with some products obviously not with all... (How are you going to sell a lawn mower? cleaning products? class action legal services? you get the point.)

On the other hand we've probably all seen those Burger King commercials with the creepy king in it. I think what Burger King did however with their XBox promotion took the best of the product placement world and the ever growing video game world. Burger King created three versions of BK character driven games through a partnership with XBox and actually SOLD these games at their restaurants, with the qualified value meal purchase. For the consumer that's great. Instead of paying $50 or more for an XBox game I can now get one for about $4 and get a fast food meal. Good deal. For BK, they obviously subsidized the cost of the game a bit but now have somehow manipulated it so that you want to PAY to receive their advertising! It's brilliant. According to Business 2.0, the games sold more than 2 million copies in four weeks, and placed them on the top 10 selling games of 2006.

Stay tuned as the Geico Caveman starts working out for his debut series this fall!