Bringing More Barnum to Brand Integration
Bringing More Barnum to Brand Integration
If branded entertainment was as madcap a circus as media pundits imply, you would think it worthy of the center ring. In truth, it languishes outside marketing’s big top and in the curiosities tent, somewhere between the Subservient Chicken and a life-size wax statue of Ernest P. “Hey, Vern” Worell.
And it is curious. Product placement generates groans from TV and film creatives, concern from congressional screen-time seekers, phone books of blogosphere analysis — and disinterested yawns from consumers. Larry Dobrow was right when he said current brand integration is tone-deaf, clumsy and too ubiquitous for viewers to notice. But his conclusion — “I no longer think there’s a way to do production integration effectively” — is premature. What brand integration needs desperately is for a modern P.T. Barnum to stroll boldly through the tent flap. Not
