Laugh at the clips, then buy

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: Advertising about advertising has long been a popular ploy on Madison Avenue. So, too, has the idea of ads that parody other ads. Now, with the increasing interest among marketers in embedding brands in entertainment programming, a viral campaign is arriving that spoofs the concept—while at the same time, of course, playing up the product.

The US consumer products division of L’Oreal is starting an online campaign—viral, because consumers are meant to pass it along—that sends up the concept of sponsors insinuating products into television shows, movies and video games.

The humourous campaign includes a website, video clips and a blog. They were developed by the L’Oreal division’s digital agency, Avenue A/Razorfish, part of Microsoft, and Kirt Gunn & Associates, an agency specialising in interactive advertising.

The campaign introduces a line of hair-care products called Garnier Fructis Style Bold It, aimed at men ages 18 to 34. Because the intended audience is “extremely savvy when it comes to marketing”, said Pete Stein, senior vice-president and general manager at the New York office of Avenue A/Razorfish, branded entertainment was considered a target ripe for satire.

The campaign is presented to consumers as if Garnier executives had made a branded entertainment agreement with “a low-rent, three-letter broadcast network named after an animal”, as one blog post foxily describes it. The deal ostensibly involved a new comedy, The Harry Situation—with innuendo-laden dialogue reminiscent of smarmy series like Three’s Company—and a companion website (theharrysituation.com).

The premise is that the incessant, heavy-handed product plugs in the first episodes supposedly made a creator of the series angry enough to hijack the site and expose the excessive commercialism of his brainchild. His purported blog entries are supplemented by video clips that pretend to offer excerpts from the offending episodes of The Harry Situation and from meetings with network executives.

Also included on the website are mock memos from Garnier; fictitious reports of focus-group interviews with dim young consumers bearing names like Ashley, Brandon and Madison; and summaries of the imaginary reactions of test audiences.

“Everyone’s fair game, and that’s what makes it fun,” said Kirt Gunn, president at Gunn. Last year, he developed an elaborate online campaign for the ThermaCare brand of heat wraps sold by P&G, which was based on the fanciful notion that men can suffer menstrual cramping.

The L’Oreal campaign partly bites the hand that feeds it, because products carrying the L’Oreal name are indeed incorporated into television shows like America’s Next Top Model. “It’s a little bit of a wink to the industry,” said Cheryl Vitali, senior vice-president for marketing for the Garnier and Maybelline New York brands at the L’Oreal division. “The challenge was not doing what’s expected,” she added.

Viral campaigns are multiplying for the same reason as branded entertainment: the urgency among advertisers to find alternative ways to reach jaded, distracted consumers as technologies like DVRs and iPods make it easier to avoid conventional pitches.