As branded entertainment continues to surge, some television networks have managed to stay away from product integrations, like the Disney Channel.
The company is a family cable network that restricts sponsorship messages to ensure that it delivers a pro-social message. Since, Disney’s target audience is children, they try to avoid being commercially influential to the market.
However, Disney has taken a different approach on its Website. The company will be launching its first online branded entertainment program—The Possibility Shop.
This Web video series is produced with Jim Henson Co. and it is exclusively sponsored by Clorox. The series is slanted towards promoting Clorox brands, including disinfecting wipes, toilet bowl cleaners, and other laundry products. Each episode will be accompanied by a short ad from Clorox, which will be used by the characters to perform household cleaning chores.
While the welcoming of brand integration comes as a surprise to many, Disney’s VP for online advertising sales says that Disney has been more open to these arrangements in the past months. Brad Davis says that the company even partnered with Walmart to create “Rock Out Your Zone”—which promoted the Walmart’s teen-targeted furniture line.
“Everything we've created before that has been Disney-driven,” explained Davis. “Now we've flipped that model where in our case we're creating the product with the advertiser's needs in mind and with the [online] guest's benefit.”
Source: AdAge