American Idol: Ahead of the Game Regarding Selective Consumption

I am a huge TV fan; my DVR is always recording multiple shows at once and sometimes it even takes me a few weeks to catch up. Although I might work at an advertising agency and commercials may pay my bills, I hate them. I watch a lot more TV than I have time for, so fast-forwarding through commercials saves me about 8 minutes on half-hour-long shows and about 18 minutes on hour-long shows. I know for a fact that I am not the only person who does this, and I am sure that advertisers are aware that we do this as well. Now more than ever, ad agencies have to come up with even more creative ways to get people to see their brand.

Of all the shows that are currently on TV, I think that the sponsors of American Idol, which are Ford, Coca-Cola and AT&T, do a great job of incorporating their brands into the show.

1. Of course, you have all seen the judges drinking out of their Coca-Cola cups.

2. On Thursday night’s result episodes, the idols always do a “Ford Music Video”, featuring a Ford car. If you are a true fan of the show, you don’t fast-forward through this because you love to hear those idols sing!

3. Ford even went as far as using this music video idea for its own commercials.

4. American Idol allows you to vote via text message, but only if you are an AT&T wireless subscriber. After each performance, when Ryan Secrest gives the voting numbers, AT&T gets mentioned at least one time while its logo is displayed.

5. American Idol recently introduced a new contest called “Impact Perfect Harmony”. To introduce the contest to the viewers, they created a video with Carly Rae Jepsen (yes, the singer of “Call Me Maybe”) where she walks around discussing the contest as she is clearly carrying a Coca-Cola bottle in her hand.

6. Ford has also introduced a new ad to American Idol by running a banner across the bottom of the screen. The banner is pulled in by a Ford car that drives across the screen, dragging the Ford logo

American Idol is not the only current program that can be seen doing this. Here are some other examples:

The first commercial following a segment on Cougar Town was a Target commercial that features the actors on the show still playing their particular character while shopping in Target. People don’t realize that it is actually a commercial therefore they watch it before they push fast-forward.

Chevy also teamed up with Glee to do a something similar during the Super Bowl last year. They bought a two-minute spot and had the Glee cast sing “See the USA in your Chevrolet”. The commercial was introduced by a the narrator for Glee saying, ”Incase you missed it…”