Desperately Sprinting Ahead
Clever product placement ad for Sprint in tonight’s episode of Desperate Housewives. It may not have been so obvious except that before and after the placement, Sprint had commercials featuring their CEO, Dan Hesse. Hesses’s message was that the network is built, that we are just starting to realize the power of the phones and that one can go to the Sprint store to have their phone personalized for their needs.
This message fit perfectly with the way the producers integrated the Sprint service into the episode. One of the characters was trying to set up her friend on a blind date. The friend was uninterested until she saw a recorded video voicemail from the prospective blind date.
The Sprint logo was clearly placed on the phone. It looked like the logo was an overlay inserted in the post-production process, as it seemed to float in the air above the phone. It would make sense that it was added in post-production, as it is always a challenge to time the deal to the production cycle. Regardless, in that short 15 seconds, Sprint was able to communicate a somewhat arcane feature.
Sprint is back in a subtle way on the 2/8/09, Desperate Housewives episode. A Sprint shopping bag was shown in the opening scene. Obviously, this is a season-long deal.
The Lexus ad in this ad was a little bit over the top, but interesting as it had to show a car that doesn’t exist (they are now 5 years in the future, this season). Very
They talked about features like a refrigerator in the back seat, about the silent operation of a hybrid and its ability to park itself. Bree, the owner of the Lexus, mentioned Lexus several times while she was touting the benefits to all of these cool features. The final shot featured a close-up of the Lexus nameplate.
Parks itself, close up on the “Lexus brand”.