| |
Net
pull -- P&G will use plugs in TV news stories
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Erin White
In a move
that could further blur the line between news reporting and
advertising, Procter & Gamble is to announce that it will
use plugs in television-news stories to market P&G brands
more effectively over the Internet. Under the deal, P&G
will sponsor 90-second features produced by a San Diego-based
TV production company called Innx on such topics as health
care, parenting and nutrition. The Innx segments will be distributed
free for use by local television stations nationwide. At the
end of each segment, the reporter, anchor or narrator will
tell viewers they can learn more by going to the TV station's
Web site and clicking on an icon for a related P&G product.
For a feature on diaper rash, for example, the icon might
say Pampers, and a mouse click would whisk the consumer to
a Pampers Web page.
P&G, the first major advertiser to sign up for the spots,
will probably sponsor about one segment a day from March to
December. Innx will seek other sponsors for news stories that
don't relate to the brands P&G has signed up for.
P&G plans to sponsor segments that dovetail with such
brands as Crest dental products, the fiber-laxative Metamucil
and the cold medicines NyQuil and DayQuil. The Web site experience
will be designed to seem more like an informational brochure
than a marketing pitch. The site might, for example, feature
questionnaires to help assess a viewer's risk of contracting
a particular malady. Innx and P&G insist the consumer-products
company won't have a say in the editorial content of the programming.
But P&G will be able to pick which features it wants to
sponsor. The consumer-products company has asked not to be
associated with stories that could hurt consumers' image of
its products. For instance, it has requested that Crest plugs
come at the end of stories about oral care and dentistry but
not about oral cancer. The whole idea troubles Bob Horner,
president of NBC News Channel, an internal NBC service that
distributes content to the roughly 200 NBC affiliates that
carry newscasts. News Channel has offered Innxprogramming
for about a year and a half, and NBC affiliates have used
it regularly. But Mr Horner says that while he hasn't seen
the new advertiser-sponsored segments, if there's a close
link between the content and the plug, he may not distribute
them.
He says
he would be concerned both about actual advertiser influence
and viewer suspicion of advertiser influence. "If there
was a piece on diet pills, we wouldn't want that to be sponsored
by a company that makes diet pills," he says. "We
don't want the reality of a problem or the appearance of a
problem."
Mr Horner
adds that he probably would distribute segments whose plugs
are unrelated to their content - say a Merrill Lynch plug
at the end of a story about gum disease. But he says that
local affiliates may not want to air any news story with a
plug embedded in it.
Keith
Connors, executive news director of WCNC in Charlotte, N.C.,
an NBC affiliate that is owned by Belo Corp, says he is also
concerned. WCNC airs Innx stories that refer to Innx's own
HealthSurfing site every weekday, but "if and when this
product is introduced to us, we're going to have to take a
long hard look at it," he says. "We certainly don't
want people to think we're only providing them with this information
because we're trying to sell them a product. That's not journalism.
That's advertising."
Jak Severson,
Innx's chief executive, says he's confident Innx can resolve
such worries. "TV stations are always jumpy about third-party
content," he says. "We're sensitive that we have
to demonstrate a level of ethical purity that far surpasses
the networks' own and certainly that of the local stations."
And not
everyone is critical. Michael Kubin, co-chief executive of
Leading Web Advertisers, a closely held New York company that
tracks Internet advertising, says combining the Internet with
other media is "exactly the way the Internet should be
used."
Marissa
Gluck, an analyst at Jupiter Media Metrix, an Internet research
firm, notes that "when an announcer says, `Please go
to our site,' it's much more effective than just having a
30-second spot in the commercial break." But she cautions
that "the value is really whether the consumers go to
the Web site. And even if they do go to the site, it's questionable
what the real value is" in terms of actual product sales.
Innx has
produced nearly 500 segments for about 200 TV stations since
the company was founded in April 1999. It currently refers
TV viewers to an Innx-created Web site called HealthSurfing.com,
which it uses to measure viewer-response rates. It has found
that nearly 0.5 per cent of viewers go to the site. Innx expects
big-name brands like P&G's to generate even more clicks.
In Vancouver in fall 2000, Mr Severson says, Innx asked the
members of a focus group how they would react to a product
plug instead of a HealthSurfing mention. They said they wouldn't
mind at all, he says. "What we came away with was that
the audience perceived no influence over the content by the
advertiser."
The move
is an experiment for P&G, which essentially invented soap
operas to hawk its wares. Like most major US marketers, the
company is under pressure to find a more effective way to
use the Internet to create brand awareness and increase sales.
P&G is betting that news reports will get better results
than banner ads, whose click-through rates overall hover at
around 0.25 per cent.
P&G
and Innx both declined to disclose financial terms but said
P&G's investment is small in dollar terms. Mr Severson
says the agreement could bring Innx up to "several million
dollars." P&G will get a hefty discount over other
advertisers, whom Innx plans to charge $11.50 per thousand
homes reached by local TV stations. At about nine million
viewers reached by Innx programming a day, says Innx Chief
Executive Jak Severson, the cost will be roughly the same
as the price of a general-replacement 30-second ad on local
television news. Eventually, Innx hopes to get a slice of
the increased ad rates that TV stations may be able to charge
if its segments make the station's commercial time more valuable.
"We're
still in a learning mode on how the Internet fits into our
overall marketing strategy," says Bryan McCleary, a P&G
spokesman. "The goal is always to have more than just
advertising on Web sites. It's got to really provide useful
information that people are going to want to come back to."
Amitabh Parashar
TOP
|
Other
Stories...
 Cash registers ring in CCCC
Rizvi, Shah chargesheeted
Adequate security for "Chori Chori"Subdued riot of colours marks Holi
Michael Jackson falls on broken foot
Spice girls insist girl power still rules
Lucky Ali tempts his fate on the big screen
|
