The Guardian today has a long profile of Joanna Shields, formerly MD of strategic partnerships at Google Europe, and now International President at Bebo.
The piece has some interesting background to the commercial arrangements behind Kate Modern. There are five principle sponsors, each paying £250,000 for six months of coverage within the episodes:
- Procter & Gamble (Gillette, Tampax and Pantene)
- MSN
- Orange Mobile
- Paramount
- Disney / Buena Vista
So what are the advertisers actually buying?
It's early days, but we are promised more than just product placements - the idea is that the brands will be written seamlessly into the plot. For example, one recent 'webisode' has Kate arranging to meet a friend at an 'Orange Wednesday' evening at the local cinema.
In some cases, the wider community can almost do the advertisers' jobs for them. I spoke to Mark Charkin, Bebo's Head of Sales in the UK, last week and he told me that a fan had commented on Kate's profile page complimenting her on her hair - the answer came straight back that the secret, naturally enough, was Silvikrin!
The presence of Procter & Gamble is intriguing given the involvement of P&G and Unilever in the early days of television - clearly P&G is taking a punt that interactive drama like this becomes the soap opera of the new century.
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