Chevy, T-Mobile, 3 Others Sponsor 'Gold Rush'

Five large brand marketers have signed on to sponsor "Gold Rush," the new online show by reality TV impresario Mark Burnett and AOL.

The deal gives the five companies--Best Buy, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola Zero, T-Mobile USA, Inc. and Washington Mutual--pivotal roles in the show, which features Web users competing in a series of interactive challenges for a top prize of $1 million in gold.

"All of our sponsors will be integrally woven into the challenges, and were given the opportunity to shape those challenges with the creative team," said Janet Balis, senior vice president-sales development at AOL.

For instance, financial services company Washington Mutual will (virtually) guard the gold at stake in the game, while telecom T-Mobile will enable contestants to connect with "buddies" while playing.

"It's not just about the name of the brand," Balis said. "It's also about the essence of the brand."

Julie Mynster, digital manager for Chevrolet, added that contestants will have to learn about the company's brands to win the challenges. "It won't just be, 'Oh, they're driving a Silverado,'" she said, referring to more conventional product placements that feature characters or contestants unobtrusively using a company's brand. Here, by contrast, to find the information needed to win the challenge, players might have to visit Chevy Web sites, Mynster said.

While Chevrolet has sponsored programs before--including the Mark Burnett TV franchise, "The Apprentice," and AOL's online show, "The Biz"--those shows didn't encourage consumers to interact with the brand to the same extent as "Gold Rush." "This is new territory for Chevy, and the industry as well," Mynster said. "In the last year and a half, with every sponsorship and promotion that we look at, we're kicking it up another notch in terms of the online community."

The sponsorships come at a time when product placement is growing. Research firm PQ Media Wednesday issued a report stating that spending on product placement soared 42 percent to $2.21 billion last year, and predicting double-digit growth again this year. Still, it's not yet clear how much product integration consumers will accept. Some commentators have recently suggested that TV shows have overloaded viewers with product placements.

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