Wal-mart and Procter & Gamble are partnering in an initiative to produce “family friendly” made-for-TV movies which gives new meaning to branded entertainment.
Their program, “Secrets of the Mountain,” airing April 16 at 8 p.m. on NBC, is about a single mother and public defender, living with her three kids in a mountain cabin they’ve inherited from an eccentric uncle.
What brings this production home to Michigan Ave. are the 12 Wal-Mart commercials that The Whitehouse is editing specifically for airing on “Secrets,” for Wal-Mart’s agency, The Martin Agency of Richmond, Va.
Extensive product placement for both marketers will be integrated into the movie story: The family’s flashlights are powered by P&G’s Duracell batteries, they feed their dogs P&G’s Iams pet food and eat cereal from Wal-Mart’s Great Value private-label brand.
Two New York-based editors from The Whitehouse, partner Steve Hamilton and Crandall Miller, were brought in to edit the spots from six days of shooting last week that, in fact, just wrapped on Sunday.
In another twist, the Wal-mart spots will run as a sequential series during commercial breaks throughout the two-hour show. Each spot represents a different day in the lives of the four-member family.
@Radical Media director Steve Miller of New York led a crew of around 50 in filming interiors and exteriors at a big, rambling house in Oak Park, its exclusive Chicago-area location.
Although the casting call went out in New York, L.A. and Chicago for actors, the four on-camera principals, a father, mother, son and daughter, came from New York.
P&G and Wal-mart are basically buying time from NBC as they will control all the ad revenue, the Wall Street Journal reported. Wal-Mart, the presenting sponsor, is paying P&G the rights for the title. P&G produced the movie on a reported $4.5 million budget.
In a sense, it’s back to the future for P&G. It was the first advertiser in 1965 to produce and sponsor a prime-time show. As the company noted in its announcement, “P&G has produced nearly 50 movies of the week, 35 years of “People’s Choice Awards, 20 soap operas and a number of beauty pageants and variety shows.”
P&G is co-founder and Wal-Mart is the co-chair of a group called Alliance for Family Entertainment, developed by the Assn. of National Advertisers to promote “family friendly” entertainment.
Pros and cons to this concept are flying through the internet. One side declares there’s a need and a place for family shows as an alternative to violent, sexual TV content. The other side charges that creating a TV movie for so-called entertainment purposes and then inserting its own products is manipulative and deceptive.
Contention aside, Chicago welcomed this major advertising client with its usual exceptional crews, locations and editorial services.
The Martin Agency, incidentally, was named Adweek’s Agency of the Year 2010.
