When is television little more than a trumped up advertorial? There are a number of programmes on television, (particularly on weekends) that window-dress advertising via lifestyle and reality formats.
Now The Gruen Transfer is about to de-bunk one of them, FOX8′s Football Superstar. The reality series, produced by North One Television Australia, is sponsored -heavily- by Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain. Why? As Gruen tells us, it’s hard to communicate some products to young males.
Wil Anderson draws attention to a Press Release for Football Superstar, which read: “Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain has been cleverly weaved into the fabric of the content, through opening credits, logos on players jerseys, signage at playing grounds and a nutritionist to ensure all players are ‘Game Ready’ for each challenge they face.”
On The Gruen Transfer next week, a panel of advertising gurus discuss the strategy, and indeed, how producers can strike an effective balance. Anderson reckons they stopped counting the logo for Kelloggs after 400… yikes.
This ep of The Gruen Transfer airs 9:00pm Wed July 30 (next week) on ABC1.
Barrie most Foxtel channels have ad’s now. One I do know does go ad free is when Fox Classics shows there movies. Great to sit and watch a classic movie like “Sunday Too Far Away” without an ad.
Bright ideas was great for Warrick Moss with his deep voice warning us of the perils of using the wrong hooks to hang up pictures with.
Hopefully on Gruen they will look at two different types of commercial driven show. Football SuperStar might be sponsored by Kellogs but its has a prize at the end and is a real competition. All these shows for years have had the product plug, maybe these are just a little OTT.
But what about shows like Bright Ideas, The Car Show, The Boat Show etc etc where basically its one long commercial break “reviewing” new cars, boats, picture hooks etc. Be interesting to know if these programs actually count towards local content?
Great show Will, where’s the thongs?
barrie, you must be watching Foxtel channels that don’t have any ads. From my memory, while I was still subscribing to Foxtel, that quite a few channels, like TV1, Fox8, Arena, etc. still interrupted the programmes with ads.
Mac, I agree with you. I wanted to like this show but gave up after 2 weeks. I mainly watch Foxtel and ABC as I hate adverts. So why would I actually watch a disection on adverts that I have never seen anyway.
I remember the Bright Ideas show on Ten! Wasn’t it hosted by Alyssa-Jane Cook? It was just half an hour of advertisements for 3M products. So bad.
I LOVE The Gruen Transfer, such a great idea for a show, and we’ll always have new ads on various platforms so there should always be new content to pick at.
Anyone remember Bright Ideas on Ten? That was just a huge ad for 3M brand products.
I really wanted to like Gruen – Will Anderson is an awesome talent and the notion of deconstructing advertising is one with stacks of comedy potential. But some of the panelists are overwhelmingly smug and patronizing and erode the humour instead of adding to it. If only some of their commentarys could be put through a filter – or a WILLTER (ho-ho!) – first, it may become the best thing on TV.