• The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, September 13, 2007 11:32 AM

"The Gamekillers"--a new MTV series about young men's quests to win over women--is a prime example of the compromises being negotiated increasingly in the entertainment industry by marketers and media. It may not be obvious to viewers, but the series is also about Unilever PLC's quest to sell more Axe antiperspirant.

Getting "branded entertainment" on the air isn't easy. While Unilever's ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty originally envisaged the show as a TV series, the company initially agreed to finance development of a single episode. That one-hour show aired several times last year on MTV, drawing enough of an audience that it agreed to air another five episodes.

Although Unilever wanted its branding to be subtle, it did want Axe's name to appear in the show somehow. MTV said no--not in the dialogue, not visually in any scenes and not in the show's title. And MTV vetoed the company's planned ad campaign. Eventually they compromised with an ad that contained a sentence at the bottom of the page, in tiny print, with the slogan: "Keep your cool. AXE dry."

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