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Tommy Hilfiger's new campaign dodges politics by transforming America into Americana

As a supporter of the "Brought to you by" model, I’m interested in the upcoming new television series and book "Tommy Hilfiger Presents: Ironic Iconic America".

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A brandjacking, fresh from Sweden. Hit the jump for a larger version.

More 3M news here.

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I found this section from Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End to be a brilliant description of the traditional ad man's daily compromise:

"Our job wasn't to ask what the point was. If that had been our job, nothing articulated to prospective clients in our capabilities brochure and our website would have escaped our rolled eyes. The point of another billboard outside O'Hare? Another mailer on your kitchen table? Good luck mustering an argument for more of that glut. If we had to call into question the point, we'd have fallen into an existential crisis that would have quickly led us to question the entire American enterprise. We had to keep telling ourselves to forget about the point and keep our noses down and focus on the fractured and isolated task at hand."

Well-written fiction: The best truth there is.

Cheers,

Johan and the PostAdvertising.com Team

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NBC's Ben Silverman's comments on network television hit a rare sweet spot: right between the heartwarming and the truly sad. Heartwarming because they came from an old broadcast TV exec and hit the core of what's wrong with television: the programming. And sad because they highlight not only how backwards we view the demise of network television, but also how there is nothing to indicate that we will do it any differently in new media.

The models in old and new media are essentially the same and equally intrusive: Someone shows you something and in return gets to expose you to messages you don't want to see. The content is sub-standard. Even giving it away for free is now hard. And the messaging is not something you want. Why do we need to be bribed with entertainment to see it? As soon as either the sponsorship or content gets to be relevant or good enough to exist independent of the other, the current TV model breaks down. Perfect pairing with Dumb and Dumber.

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We need to stop helping brands make their communication with the outside world so clean and simple. Yelling desperately for attention for 15 seconds to a numb audience through broadcast television demanded it. But as we consummate the shift toward brand storytelling, the voluntary, committed and less controlled interaction with clients calls for the opposite.

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And why the perfect bouquet is imperfect

We humans actually do marketing very well when we stay away from trying to do just that: marketing. You see it when you pay attention to the mundane everyday interactions. And it highlights some of the fundamental flaws with the way brands communicate with their audience. Perhaps it's no more complicated than "...should a person talk to you like ads talk to you, you'd punch them." But it's worth a closer look.

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And why the perfect bouquet is imperfect

We humans actually do marketing well when we stay away from trying to do just that: marketing. You see it when you pay attention to the mundane, everyday interactions. And it highlights some of the fundamental flaws in the way brands communicate with their audience. Perhaps it's no more complicated than "...should a person talk to you like ads talk to you, you'd punch them." But it's worth a closer look.

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I have been following what the insurance giant Liberty Mutual has been doing with its short film initiative. Finding something that comes across as both sincere and relevant is always a treat. Finding it on a site sponsored by one of the biggest players in one the most boring and conservative industries known to man, certainly added positively to the über experience.

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Johan Liedgren responds to this op-ed from Adweek.

I found Barbarian Group CEO Mr. Palmer's article on "Branded Content: Not a good idea" interesting and misguided at the same time. I applaud any call to action at this point but take objection to the solution suggested: "We, the big agencies, should build our own channel...." First and foremost, the separation between "church and state" that Mr. Palmer assumes in the 30-second-spot-driven television model of today, is not there. No, Mr. Palmer, it's not art supported by patrons. TV is, for the most part, serialized content designed specifically for the very model that supports it. Art it is not.

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Johan Liedgren responds to this article from MediaPost.about product placement vs. interruptive ads that was based on this research from Entertainment Weekly.

The "research" in the EW article compares $2M in ad sales for a prime-time TV show, say ER, with product placement. The article concludes that there's no way anyone could ever get that amount of money for product placement, and even if you substitute commercials with enough product placement to get to the same economics—it would look like an ad at the end of the day. But the article completely ignores the obvious fact that 30–second ads are less and less effective and that more and more folks skip them with DVRs (half of DVR users skip all ads today).

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Johan is a resident Mr. Smarty Pants over here at the Intergalactic Post Advertising HQ. Sometimes we send him links to Wikipedia articles with minor logical fallacies just to see him tear RandomUser1247 a new one. But it works better with articles about advertising. Take this beaut from MediaPost. Double your pleasure in this installment, as the MediaPost article was based on this Entertainment Weekly article. Ho ho ho! Johan has little love for them. See what he has to say after the jump. Also, isn't his Swinglish charming? That's Swedish + English for you guys who are bad at math.

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Brought to you by v. Interrupted by: Are the two models simply benefactors with an agenda—helping to pay for entertainment—or do the models represent different relationships among the content, the brand and its audience?

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It takes money to create, produce and distribute entertainment. Always has. Whether it’s feeding Christians to lions at the Coliseum 2000 years ago or paying for the license to run old episodes of Law and Order, someone has to foot the bill. And whoever forks over the money does so because they want a return on their investment.

Sure, there may be arts lovers who anonymously donate a few million to the Guggenheim. But that’s for the most part irrelevant both in terms of the audience reached as well as impact on the economy. Even when American Express sponsors an independent film festival, its support of the arts is only a side effect to benefits assumed for their true constituents: the shareholders. Shareholders are not buying AMEX stock to support the arts; they can do that themselves with the money they expect the corporation to make for them. And the key here is, we—the audience—are all very well aware of that.

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