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On the "How much do you love your favorite TV show?" spectrum, a person could fall anywhere from "Who loves television?" to "If my favorite show was about to be canceled, I would feel duty bound to go to the store, buy a specific product (Tabasco sauce, light bulbs and peanuts were the chosen items for Roswell, Friday Night Lights, and Jericho, respectively), pack it up to United State Postal Service standards, and then pay to have it sent to the head of the network, the person deciding my beloved program's fate." Dedicated fans of Chuck, NBC's critically acclaimed action-spy-comedy show on the verge of cancellation, are on the "We buy Tabasco" end of the spectrum, but they're being both more clever, calculating and cynical than the peanut purchasers. They're not sending anyone anything—they're buying Subway sandwiches. Why? Because Subway had a big product placement in a recent episode. See, Chuck fans do more than just watch, discuss, obsess and debate their show— they actively support their show's advertisers. Best fans ever?
Rather than communicate to executives that Chuck has a passionate fan base by buying useless junk, these fans are buying branded junk. They are demonstrating their willingness to be successfully advertised to. But the advertising isn't working in the old fashioned sense, i.e. making the audience want to buy the thing advertised, it's working because the audience wants something from NBC. The product these folks want isn't a six-inch on wheat, it's Chuck, and they're buying the subs to prove it. (How much do you think Subway cares about their motives?)
Even if the fans are manipulating the typical network-advertiser-consumer dynamic, NBC and Subway are getting what they want—people with open wallets—which is why the strategy could work. Of course, if it doesn't, Chuck fans will have bought a lot of mediocre sandwiches from a huge company hoping to convince another huge company that their sandwich-buying ability amounted to something valuable. That's much more ambitious, and potentially misguided, than sending peanuts.
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There's an interesting article in the Times today about a deal the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation just cut with Viacom, which owns CBS, MTV, Nick, BET, etc., to create new, socially responsible programs and to insert lessons on healthy living, AIDS prevention, education, and so on into already existing programs. As the Times puts it, the foundation is now paying for "message placement," a variation on product placement where the benefits of organ donation, not Snapple, are being sold to the audience.
The foundation has already influenced story lines on shows like ER, Law & Order, and Private Practice, the idea being that George Clooney, in character as Dr. Doug Ross, is a better salesman for organ donation than the most persuasive educational pamphlet ever written ever could be. The Gates Foundation isn't the only nonprofit using this method—the Kaiser Family Foundation has worked with the likes of America's Next Top Model—but it has taken the rare step of paying for it. The money is, of course, the best way to ensure the Gates' message "gets out" and is taken seriously by the folks who actually write these TV shows, but it still sets an uncomfortable precedent: If the Gates Foundation can buy a "message" on a prime-time drama, so can some other, possibly lesser, organization. Social health issues are way more complicated than Snapple, which is maybe why they shouldn't be for sale.
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