Last night, during “The Office” (which, by the way, heavily featured the Apple iPod as a “$20 Secret Santa” Christmas party gift exchange goes awry when Michael turns it into a “Yankee Swap” and everyone vies for the Apple iPod Michael bought for Ryan despite the $20 limit), NBC began running a lower-third graphic that announced to viewers that “The Office” is now available from Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The graphic ran for about :05 seconds and ran at least twice during the half-hour program. It featured a rather large Apple logo as well.
NBC’s “The Office” via Apple’s iTunes Music Store here.
We have no information about whether Apple is paying for or helping underwrite these nice little silent promos, but there’s a good possibility that these graphics spring from NBC’s Promotions Department and cost Apple nothing. Obviously, this is excellent free advertising for Apple, if that is the case. And, if Apple’s paying a little something, it’s still excellent advertising for Apple.
We’ll try to get a screen grab. If you have one, please email to
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Related articles:
NBC Universal President Zucker says more new TV shows coming soon to Apple’s iTunes Store – December 06, 2005
NBC Universal & Apple offer new shows on U.S. iTunes Music Store, iTunes video sales top 3 million – December 06, 2005
Apple adds NBC-owned TV Shows to online iTunes Store – December 06, 2005
There was also a commercial. Nice plug on nbc.com as well. In lieu of “My Name is Earl”, I’d like to get a collection of Jaime Pressly’s work.
Besides this cross-promotion which is occuring between Apple and it’s content providers, it appears possible there may also be some straight ahead retailing by the content providers occuring from within iTunes? Check this from Media Post Publications:
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=37208
“John Miller, chief marketing officer of the NBC Universal Television Group, says: “We get branded pages and a considerably broader range of content on the site.” He says this includes specific pages for all the shows–including a Vintage page for NBC’s older programs. “Each will be a living, evolving retail space where we can preview shows, present free special offerings, and offer product for sale–the next stage for iTunes video electronic sell-through. Soon a Bravo Page will follow–and perhaps others.”
The OFFICE was a great episode, and it was mostly featuring the new iPod!
Not in the commercial, but the show itself. They were exchanging Christmas presents at work, and one of the gifts was the new iPod video, as they called it, and everyone wanted it.
This was absolutley great free advertisements for Apple before Christmas!
They ran a quick comercial at the end of the show as well. It seemed like it took less than 15 seconds, but there was enough time to mention that other shows were available too.
Damn! I don’t watch “The Office,” but I would have last night if I had known the main plot conerned an iPod. If only there was a way for me to view NBC shows such as this the day after they aired, for a small fee or something…
The fact that there was a rather sizable apple logo in the “ad” makes me think that apple paid for it. Why would NBC want to increase apple’s general brand awareness, which is what their logo is for, immediate brand recognition with hopefully an association with good quality. All NBC needs is for people to understand that you get them through iTunes, so I see no reason why they would put up a big apple logo unless apple asked them to.
I wish I had seen these to see if they are well done or cheesy consumer promotion. Apple has always done a great job of making good ads without seeming that a self serving consumerist whore, IMO. I wonder if NBC can do it it too.
The flood gates are opening. Hold on.
In a few years, people will proclaim that Apple has redefined television viewing; something that hasn’t ever happened since it was first invented. You (or your TiVo) no longer wait for a network to broadcast an episode, but rather they wait for you to download it. TV on YOUR terms.
Product placement within the episode will be much more valuable as people can now digitally skip right over the commercials. People will not tolerate downloading commercials if they have to pay for an episode.
Cable companies, if they continue to exist, will look more like iTunes Music Store where you can pick and choose your programs on demand for either subscription-like streaming or to be purchased as a download.
20 years from now, kids will not understand why their parents wasted do much time WAITING for an episode to be broadcast or the difficulties in deciding what to watch if 3 programs were on simultaneously. …and as they learned in their history class, Apple was the start of it all.
Jay said: ” Why would NBC want to increase apple’s general brand awareness, which is what their logo is for, immediate brand recognition with hopefully an association with good quality.”
It seems to me that to make people aware of the available product, you must know where to purchase it. This kind of cross-marketing is very common. No good offering a great product if the potential customers can’t find it. I doubt that Apple would pay for this especially since the rumour is that the content providers are netting most of the $1.99.
You can’t beat advertising and brand awareness like this.
Whoever said “it’s over, Apple lost the platform war” didn’t see the flanking attack coming did they.
Battlestar Galactica promos on Sci-Fi have iTunes availability blurbs at the end, too.
Content providers are drooling over the fact that people will actually pay for TV shows.
You thought cable was expensive, this is actually worse.
It goes along the lines of sat. radio, you pay, no advertisements, you have control.
Does this mean that studios are having a hard time getting advertisers?
Or does this create a whole new elite class of content users?
Will Apple produce a set top box selling content on a per-view basis? Perhaps give the first of a season free, like crack, and then the rest you pay $1.99 each for?
Steve Jobs did say “cable companies are a monopoly”. People can choose to use DSL, so that cuts the cable companies from the loop.
And the new Intel chips have HDCP content protection, so that will stop Hollywood from bitching.
Think Bill (msnbc) is on the horn this morning to NBC? “Hey, I thought we were buds?” Wat’s this iTunes crap?”
**great post, MacDude– Also on-demand is being pushed hard right now so Apple is simply offering another option. Will the consumer pay? I guess we’ll see..
prut prut asks: ” Will the consumer pay? I guess we’ll see..”
I think we are seeing. With very limited content available, the iTMS has sold over 3 million downloads of programming. Imagine what the downloads will be in a month with all this content and the holiday season approaching. Looks to me like Apple is poised to do with video what it did for music. And own the whole show to boot!
MW: followed as in It looks like M$ has followed the wrong path again.
This may be the beginning of a revolution, but it’s still pretty expensive at this point. I can pay $1.99 an episode to watch it on a tiny screen in my iTunes/iPod, or I can TiVo it fo FREE every week. I paid a one-time $300 lifetime fee for my TiVo many many years ago, so everything is free from this point forward.
And let’s not forget that we can now download “KNIGHT RIDER”!! Hell yeah!!!! Now I can watch and re-watch all those “Evil K.I.T.T.” episodes! Hot damn! Gimme some chips and a cold one, my evenings are now booked!
What’s all the fuss with iPods anyway? I for one don’t have one. And I don’t see many in my megacompany carrying one either.
love it. it seems that nbc see the success that abc is having and therefore offered more content. it’ll be interesting to see what abc will do to update, or provide more, content.
mw “economic”
I was watching Extra,expecting for the Fear Factor, so in the Extra Show there were showing about 6 or 7 imag G5 running itunes and demostrating how to download NBC programs from itunes, then the girl connected with the others hosters and one of then was in the street of new york watching Jay Leno on his ipod, I thinks this is an advertising of NBC, because when Extra finished NBC show a 10 or 15 seconds ads remembering the NBC apple connection….
We’ll all be watching for these ads on “Law & Order” tonight.
The iTunes Music Store publishes in seven languages.
C’mon dudes .. let’s see some non-english content in that turkey. How the hell are we gonna conquer the world if all we present is TV shows reflecting one single language and one single culture? Let’s get the dang show on the road here.
Hey Bill,
According to this article, that’s not exactly true, now is it?
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,66460,00.html
It seems an interesting chain of events has begun.
As one network tries to out-do the previous with more shows and more episodes, perhaps we’ll eventually see a time when any show is available at any time.
Though paying $1.99 for 30 minutes of video makes it much harder to justify paying $.99 for 3 minutes of audio. Perhaps that’ll put those ‘variable pricing’ record company execs back in their place.
I can’t wait until this spreads across the Atlantic to little Britain. If you own a TV in the UK, it is the law that you pay for the BBC [called a TV lisence, works out at ~£10 a month]. This results in a very high calibur of show and if these are available on iTunes, it’ll be hard to resist. However, it may make it difficult to want to pay yet more to watch them.
We’ll just have to wait and see…
MW: until. ‘I can’t wait until…’
Oops, I meant ‘license’
And they say I’m dylsexic
Mike Buonarroti said “People will not tolerate downloading commercials if they have to pay for an episode.”
How is this different to when I pay for a DVD and find that there are commercials for other films at the start of it and I’m even prevented from skipping through them ?
I don’t like it, but few customers make a fuss about it, so they keep doing it.
They will claim that the cost can only kept so ‘low’ by subsidising the content with adverts, just as you find in magazines and newspapers too.
In reality, it’s just the advertisers exploiting another opportunity and the publishers exploiting another revenue stream, while everybody exploits the customers.