Sears wishes for advertising sway in deal with Corner Gas

Sears Canada’s Wish Book will make its way to Dog River SK this year, joining past guests such as Canadian icons the high-flying Snowbirds, the band Tragically Hip, and former NHL hockey player Darryl Sittler on CTV Inc.’s hit series Corner Gas. But the Wish Book’s involvement comes courtesy of a deal brokered by Sears Canada’s media buying agency Mediaedge: cia, as the retailer makes its first foray into having its advertising integrated into a show. In an episode tentatively scheduled for December 12, the Wish Book catalogue has been written into the script, and denizens of the fictitious Saskatchewan small town find themselves reminiscing about ordering Christmas gifts from the book. The deal with CTV includes product placement deals for nine other episodes in 2006. "There will definitely be some specific products integrated into those nine other shows, and then we’ll be able to measure (the effect) with some precision," says Vincent Power of Sears Canada’s corporate communications department. He notes that Sears will be able to track the success of the product placement by seeing if sales of the featured products spike after the Corner Gas episodes air. Starting the product placement around Christmas will enable Sears to differentiate itself from a slew of other retailers’ promotions at that time, points out Power. "It’s another way to expose customers to the Sears product in a lifestyle setting without it being a commercial, which people can get up and walk away from," he notes. "It’s about finding new innovative ways to market our product. This is new for us, and hopefully a way for us to make a breakthrough in what is typically in the fourth quarter a clutter of advertising for people to shop at stores at Christmas. We think this might be a way for us to make an impression at a time when there are tons of commercials and tons of stores advertising." The Christmas episode will follow two weeks of on-air promotions on CTV stations for the episode brought to viewers by Sears. Power adds that Corner Gas, set in Dog River, was chosen because the show melds well with Sears’ image and feel. "If I’m not mistaken, there’s going to be a Sears merchandise pick-up location in the gas station. We have 2,200 different locations across the country in different formats," states Power. "The Wish Book was a natural because it is like an icon in Canadian retailing, especially in rural Canada. It provides small communities with the selection of a department store." Power isn’t sure which Sears products will be featured in the other episodes, a detail that still has to be worked out. He adds that there are no plans so far for any tie-in marketing, such as the contest promotion L’Oréal ran with Shopper’s Drug Mart in connection with the cosmetic company’s sponsorship of CTV’s reality TV series Canadian Idol (CCR, Feb. 27/04). Bill Mustos, VP of dramatic programming at CTV, says the Sears deal is just one of many product placement agreements that the network hopes to ink. He notes, for example, that the candy bars or other merchandise currently on display at Dog River resident Brent LeRoy’s gas station are generic. Soon, he hopes companies will be paying to have them replaced with their branded products. While Corner Gas was the number one ranked homegrown show in the 2004-05 season in terms of viewership – when at least one episode drew 1.8 million viewers – it isn’t recouping what it costs to produce it (CCR, July 6/05). It doesn’t receive any funding from the Canadian Television Fund, and is financed by BCE Inc.’s $230-million benefits package (CCR, July 19/00), which runs out August 2008. Mustos told Canadian Communications Reports in June that the idea was to find ways to have the series stand financially on its own before those benefits run out. Other Canadian broadcasters have begun to look at product placement as a way to pay for programming as the 30-second TV spot begins to lose some of its appeal in the age of on-demand viewing (CCR, May 6/05). It is a move that the United States has also embraced. The appearance of Ford vehicles in the U.S. series 24, for example, was the focus of part of a discussion by Canada’s broadcast leaders at this year’s Banff World Television Festival (CCR, June 24/05). It is also an approach that Sears plans to further examine. In the past, the retailer has provided products in exchange for airtime, but before its Corner Gas deal it hadn’t done brand integration. "We said we wanted to get some messaging out with our Wish Book. We haven’t done a whole bunch of product placement like this. It is new to us to integrate product into a show, but it certainly is a way of advertising that we’re looking at exploring even more in the future," says Power.

Sears wishes for advertising sway in deal with Corner Gas

Broadcast | November 7, 2005

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