New Twist to Product Placement and Reality TV Yields Excitement for Viewers; Results for Brands

May 10, 2005 -- Within a year, viewers will be able to do something with their TVs that they have never been able to do before. Viewers will be able to get product placements for free or at a discount, in turn driving a direct and measurable response rate – a first in an industry facing speculative measurement. The Carlson Corporation is releasing Take-Away Value, an inducement that essentially turns TV impressions into viewer interactions online. It then sends the viewers to make purchases at brick-and-mortar retailers, while tracking the entire process, said Company CEO, JB Carlson.

“Carlson Corporation is using a formula that has earned an astonishing 46% response rate with a 22% conversion-to-transaction,” Mr. Carlson said. He also theorizes that, “it promises to be a huge ratings success as 43% of newspaper sales are coupon driven. Likewise, TV ratings will increase proportionally.”

Those numbers and the fact that purchase intention impact is far greater for Take-Away Value than any other Product Placement or Ads have enabled Carlson to secure a movie company and some of the biggest manufacturers in the world, he said.

In a difficult-to-explain process, Carlson synthesized existing technologies to make the entire viewer experience electronic, simple and free by leveraging the national debit/credit card infrastructure.

Carlson says that this concept can work well with multiple TV formats but that they chose to create something organically. “For the first time ever, contestants turn viewers into winners as two teams are pitted against each other to win votes from Americans while performing a series of tasks. Winning viewers receive product placements for free or discount.”

“Take-Away Value in the content receives such high awareness and response to calls-to-action it can be used to manage risk where ratings did not meet expectations,” Mr. Carlson said they plan on using other techniques too. “We plan on integrating Take-Aways in our cross promotional work with talk-shows.”

The biggest predicament product placement faces is that there are a dozen measurement techniques. “That is one of the biggest problems we solve,” Mr. Carlson states. “We really don’t have a measurement issue because we induce an actual sale and track the entire process.”

And it doesn’t stop there. Viewers can donate the money they receive to any non-for-profit. Mr. Carlson says, “This enables us to do something really good while leveraging an installed base to earn even greater ratings success.”

About The Carlson Corporation
The Carlson Corporation is the leader in innovative marketing techniques. Founded in 1993, it started by placing a manufacturer in a national catalog. It then started producing celebrity endorsed radio commercials and quickly rose to create “the localization of advertising” by creating an innovative way of producing TV commercials for specialized markets.