• by December 5, 2005

OUT OF THE BOX -- A product placement here, a product placement there, and pretty soon you're talking about some really branded entertainment dollars. How real? Well, according to the media tabulators at PQ Media, it's already more than a $3.5 billion marketplace, and is growing at high double-digit rates. Savvy ad industry watchers might note that is much higher than the low single-digit rates some of Madison Avenue's leading ad forecasters are predicting for conventional ad spending. Clearly, when it comes to branded entertainment, marketers are thinking out-of-the-box. The question is, will it prove to be a Pandora's box? That's what some pretty knowledgeable insiders will try to determine Wednesday morning at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York during an AWNY Media Insights Breakfast. AWNY, of course, stands for Advertising Women of New York, but based on this forum's lineup, it might be dubbed BRAWNY. No, not for BRanded Advertising Women of New York, and certainly not for the highly absorbent nature of the panel composition, but because they're all pretty muscular on the subject.

Heck, only one of them is actually a woman - Full Circle Entertainment's Julie Kantrowitz - and not all of them are even from New York, though one, Conde Nast's David Carey, is a New Yorker. Another is Deutsch media maven and branded entertainer Peter Gardiner. Of course, you don't need to be either female or from the Big Apple to be sharp on this subject, and Neal Lattner will prove that, offering a client's perspective on the topic. Lattner, of course, is head of communications strategy at Sharp Electronics.

Each brings a unique perspective to the subject, especially Carey, who, you may recall, is famous for striking a groundbreaking single-sponsorship deal that turned an issue of The New Yorker into a target for angst-ridden consumer magazine editors. Frankly, we never understood all the fuss. The Target ads appeared, as well, ads, not as editorial content in the magazine. Nonetheless, it violated an obscure rule in the American Society of Magazine Editors' code of ethics, showing how fine the line is between branded content dos and don'ts. If you want to learn more, you might want to swing by Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, we're already hearing shouts and murmurs of an upcoming series by New Yorker writer Maclolm Gladwell's on new neuroscientific research on the restorative cognitive properties of Absolut vodka. The working titles, we are told, are "Drink Before You Blink" and "The Tipsy Point."