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.
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