Horrible example of Branded Entertainment

BY: BRIAN ROBBINS  |  Branding, General Rambling, Online Marketing

My wife and I finally got around to watching last week’s CSI: Miami episode. This is the one where they had “extra bonus content” that was only available on cbs.com.

Unfortunately it wasn’t still linked from the main page, so we had to hunt around a little bit in order to find it. Not a big deal though since we are looking at this over a week later, although it does show how clueless some of the networks still are about PVR users.

Once on the CSI: Miami homepage, we followed the link to “Secret is Revealed” At first, I thought we clicked on the wrong thing as all we got was a full page Hummer ad. Then I noticed the URL was to /hummer/ which seemed a bit odd.

It started playing the full video clip and I realized that the bonus content WAS a Hummer advertisement. Throughout the course of the clip we had several “money shots” of the H3, and even a line dedicated to how great it looked. On top of that I don’t remember a single shot where you can’t see the Hummer.

CSI is already a bit borderline with product placement, but it’s never gotten in the way of the entertainment for me. However this “bonus” clip clearly crosses the line for me, and even my wife’s first comment after watching was about the entire thing being nothing but an extended Hummer ad.

I truly think that branded entertainment is going to be a huge deal in the near future, but poor decisions like this are going to do nothing for the brand, and only serve to alienate the true audience.