In today’s episode, Cineverse CEO Chris McGurk and MicroCo CEO Jana Winograde join host Cynthia Littleton to discuss their new venture to bring super short, low budget drama series to the U.S. They gamely answer the question: How is this not Quibi? And Variety reporter Ethan Shanfeld details how AI tools are accelerating product placement in TV and film.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and
analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Tuesday, August nineteenth, twenty
twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Lyttleton. I am co
editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in
LA He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around
the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode,
(00:29):
we'll talk with industry veterans Chris McGirk and Jana Winograde
about their new venture Microco. The pair explain why they
are investing in the super short, low budget micro drama
series that are a red hot trend in Asia right now.
And we'll talk with Variety reporter Ethan Shanfeld about how
AI is changing the business of product placement. But before
(00:53):
we get to that, here are a few headlines just
in this morning that you need to know. Next Star
has set a deal to a require Tegna for six
point two billion dollars. Next Star already owns about two
hundred TV stations. Tagna owns sixty four stations. This is
a big gamble that the FCC is going to change
the rules that limit how many stations a single company
(01:15):
can own, because otherwise Nextstar will be way over the
legal limit. This will be a long process at the FCC.
Jimmy Kimmel has not stopped speaking out about the cancelation
of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Love seeing the
camaraderie between those two guys. Don't miss Clayton Davis's interview
with Kimmel on Variety dot com right now. And ESPN
(01:39):
has parted ways with Spike Lee on his Colin Kaepernick docuseries,
The culprit Is Creative Differences. All of these stories and
so much more can be found on Variety dot com
right now. Now we turn to conversations with Variety journalists
and industry leaders about news and trends in show business today.
(02:00):
My guests are Chris McGirk, chairman and CEO of Cineverse,
and Jana Winograde, who is CEO of Microco. They are
teaming with two other well known executives, Lloyd Brawn and
Susan Rovner to dive into the new world of micro series.
Chris McGirk and Jana Winograde, thank you so much for
joining me to talk about your new venture.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Thanks very much, Cynthia.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Well, let's start at the beginning. You two have come
together in a new venture that is also act by
Lloyd Braun's Banyon Ventures. It's called Microco and you are
focusing on the emerging world of microdramas, which is definitely
something that Variety has been tracking coming out of Asia
in particular. Chris, let's start with you. You've been with Cinaverse
(02:47):
for over a decade. How did this venture come together?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, it came together very quickly actually, and you know,
we've been looking at centavers for new ventures at the
leading edge where the industry is going, where we could
apply the assets that we built over the years. We
own our own streaming and content management technology called Matchpoint.
We've got over one hundred engineers in India who keep
advancing that technology, building AI tools. We've got thirty streaming
(03:16):
channels with the eighty million monthly viewers, more than fifty
podcasts at this point, in a library of over seventy
thousand titles. And we used all those assets a year
ago to launch a movie called Terrifier three, which I
think shot the industry and it did ninety million dollars
worldwide and we have less than a million in marketing
(03:37):
because we used all those assets, these kind of new
age assets to market the movie in a kind of
unique way and go after the fan bases, the streaming
channels and podcasts that really captured in our social media footprint.
So we were looking for the next big thing to
apply those assets against, and micro jamas kept coming up.
(03:58):
It seemed like a business that had just exploded overseas
and really what it needed was a platform here domestically
in order to create and distribute that kind of content
in a blow cost and effective way. And so we
moved really really quickly to get a deal done with
Lloyd and Company and bring Janna on board and announce
this thing because we think there's a Ugit managed to
(04:19):
being a first lover here domestically, you know as well.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well between the four of you, there is a lot
of collective experience at networks, at studios. Janet, tell me
how you plugged into this venture.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, Susan Roepner and I have been friends for thirty years.
We started on our first day together at ABC, and
after she left NBCU and I left Showtime, we really
had a strong feeling we wanted to work together. We
have incredibly complementary skill sets and incredible respect for one another,
and we've been really looking at a number of things
(04:54):
to do, and when we heard about micro dramas, it
really felt like an area where we could take what
we love to do best in storytelling and take that
where the consumers are now consuming content. Because storytelling never changed.
Great stories people always want to see them, They always
want to see characters. But what has changed is how
(05:16):
the audience consumes that content and what they watch and
on what devices, and how they want to engage with it.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So let me be clear, you will launch this on
the Cineverse platform, or you will have a dedicated micro
code platform.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
We're going to have a dedicated micro co platform, but
that is built by Cineverse with all the incredible technology
that they have.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
We don't have a name yet for that platform. It's
not going to be MicroC micro Co is a working
title of a corporate title. I think the other thing
that's important from a financial standpoint and a speed to
launch standpoint, we spent tens of millions of dollars over
the years already investing in the technology, in buying companies
(06:01):
to build out our social network to basically build out
our channel footprint.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Let me ask you a fairly blunt question, how is
this not Quibi?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I'll take that one. Katzenberg was prescient, but it's a
whole different world than it was in twenty twenty. Twenty
twenty was just a completely different time, not just in
terms of COVID, but consumers have embraced short form vertical
content in so many ways now and in ways they
just hadn't become really accustomed to at the time that
Quibi launched. So whether it's YouTube or TikTok, they're used
(06:36):
to the scrolling vertical behavior. It wasn't trying to bring
people on and teach them something new. We're not trying
to create that new behavior. We're expanding that behavior to
include narrative storytelling. Even the format that we're talking about
with microdramas. This is now an established format. It's been
prevalent in China for many years, it's prevalent in Korea,
(06:59):
it's in Eastern Europe, and they have brought their apps
here and those apps are doing incredibly well on the
app store. The truth of the matter is starting a
direct to consumer business is a really heavy lift and
that's what Katzenberg was trying to do. But we have
this Cineverse flywheels, so we're not starting from ground zero.
(07:20):
We'll have access to one hundred and fifty million fans
of genre content including horror and romance, true crime, and anime,
and the marketing tech to target them.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
How will you produce it? Are you calling up showrunners
and notable people or do you see this as something
that is coming more from the grassroots of the creator economy.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The way we're looking at this is a little bit
different in approach. We are not trying to make premium television.
We've done a lot of research into what is making
micro dramas and we're actually going to call the micro
series because we're not just looking at dramas, but we've
done a lot of research into what is making that
genre of content work for the audience.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Will you work with the union talent?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
We are figuring out now exactly how we're going to
be moving forward in the community. But we're really looking
at this we are not planning to do premium productions.
We are looking at price points that are well well
well below what a normal television production would be in
(08:24):
more in line with the microdrama budgets that the current
microdrama apps are using that probably will not be conducive
to the guild talent or big stars, but as a
general rule, we are really trying to stick with the
business model that makes financial sense.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
We all came out of the studio system, but we
see the turmoil that's going on in the business now
where literally tens of thousands of people have blust their jobs.
We're a company that prides itself on being a rebel company,
employing people and creating a new business that is going
to be great through the industry. I think is our
first and foremost subjective here.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
In addition to our originals, we do plan to have
a content creator vertical. The content creators are broadening out
to give their fans a more three to sixty degree experience,
and we feel like micro series can be a really
good pillar of that experience. We're sort of looking at
as a bridge between the creator economy as it currently
(09:27):
exists and the traditional studio produced series, or maybe the
better way to say it will be the intersection of
the then diagram, the overlapping slice, because right now what's
happening is the big studios and platforms are trying to
fit creators and influencers into long form, traditionally formatic content,
and not only is that a lengthy process for such
(09:49):
a fast moving space, but that's not how we're where
the audience is used to engaging with them. What we
can give creators is a more frictionless way to migrate
their current audience over to the different creators experience. And
then with the platform we're going to have, we're going
to be able to give them the ability to have
the social interaction they're used to having with creators, and
that's not something you can do in the traditional space.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Will this be entirely subscription or will you have some
ad support baked in?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
We will have a number of different monetization models. The
one thing we're clear on is we're not going to
have a very hard paywall when you first enter.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
When do you expect the first of this content to
hit the marketplace.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
We're talking about launch first quarter of next year, first
calendar quarter, and again it's going to be a mix
of licensed creator content and our own origional content. Over time,
our content will become much more of the percentage of
the following it. So we're thinking probably by next April,
we will launch the service. We've got a name.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
First, we'll ask listeners to send in suggestions. I want
to say thank you both for coming on and we
will absolutely stay tuned. We'll certainly rooting for you to
bring some much needed jobs back to this creative community.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Thanks Cynthia, thank you.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Next up, we'll hear from Ethan Shanfeld, who was a
variety reporter based in New York. He became intrigued at
how technology is changing the process of landing real life
brands in movies and TV shows. Ethan Shanfield, thanks for
joining me.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Thank you, Cynthia.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
You filed a story recently that got my attention. Why
product placement in movies and TV is peaking. It's a
great variety headline, Ethan. What was the spark for the story?
Speaker 4 (11:37):
So what first drew me to the story was I
met a young guy who works at UTA at a
networking dinner and he was telling me about a specific
placement that happened in season two of The Bear. And
what he said was basically that placement can make somebody's career,
like landing a deal like that, which the money behind
(11:58):
all these deals is very kept secret, but a lot
of them are seven figure deals. They involve broad sort
of ad spend across the network and then also sometimes
product placement, and so it got me thinking, I wanted
to do a story on two or three of these
big product placement deals that have happened in the past
couple of years on some of the buzziest shows on TV.
(12:20):
And so he set me up with some people at
UTA who work on these deals. And once we started
talking about the deals, what I noticed was that I
was sitting with a bunch of statistics people at a
Hollywood agency. What UTA has done is hired people who
specialize in product placement, and they've created this measurement system.
(12:43):
So if their client is Coca Cola, for example, which
was the example with the Bear, they can go to
Coca Cola and crunch all the numbers and say, well,
if you do a thirty second advertisement in the NBA Finals,
this is how many people are going to watch the ad.
You decide to put a bottle of Coke zero next
to iodebris character in a three minute scene in the Bear,
(13:07):
we don't know how many people are going to watch it,
but this might be more impactful for your brand. And
so for that example. Specifically, Coca Cola looked at some
early scripts from season two of The Bear. They helped
pinpoint a specific scene that worked with their campaign, which
at the time was called Recipe for Magic. The scene
(13:28):
is Iodebrie's character is they're sharing a slice of cake
with her and her dad on her late mom's birthday,
and it's very subtle that there's just a bottle of
coke sitting next to her. She doesn't drink it, it's
not the label is not clearly shown for much of
the scene, but clearly that was the right move for
Coca Cola, and a lot of people in the business
(13:48):
point to it as a very strong example of product placement.
It sounds like they're bringing data and AI tools to
analyzing the optimal frames to put in product placements. We
talked a lot about specific examples of product placement, the
trends that they're seeing in twenty twenty five. One of
the things I put in the piece is that product
(14:09):
placement has existed in Hollywood for basically as long as
film and TV have existed. It used to trickle down
from the networks. So, for example, ABC might have a
deal with Hershey Chocolate and it trickles down to the shows,
so they would come to the producers and say, we
need you to put Hershey's chocolate in this scene of
(14:29):
family matters or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I can definitely attest to it. As recently as ten
years ago, if a producer had come to ABC and said, oh, look,
I've done a placement deal for my show, they would
have gotten their handslab. This kind of stuff was completely
controlled by the network on the film side, by the studio.
But your reporting is showing that there are now a
lot more avenues to getting these deals done.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Absolutely, and what the product placement people are seeing is
not only that the producers are soliciting these deals, that
they're enthusiastic about them. Right now, as budgets are being
slashed in Hollywood, costs are ballooning, the producers are finding
these avenues to sort of cushion that.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
There's an interesting discussion in your story about the old
solution to this would be to come up with a
generic box of cereal that said Cereal on it. In
the world of hyperrealism that we live in, those kinds
of fake generic products almost take you out of the story.
It's better to see the box of tryskits or the
can of coke or the bottle of tied detergent.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
Yeah, that seems to be the mindset of a lot
of writers and producers.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I want to bring you back to something you said earlier,
which was that doing a great product placement deal can
be make or break for somebody's career. Was that for
marketing execs. Is there an emerging, very specific statistician discipline here.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
I think so. But one of the other things that
made me laugh while reporting this story was if you
ask any of these people what the holy grail of
product placement is in the last few years, a lot
of them will point to Barbie and the General Motors
partnership with Barbie, because you had all these scenes with
Barbie's dream car, you had all these cars on the
(16:11):
freeway in that car chase scene. In the real world,
you know, nobody knew that Barbie was gonna make one
point four billion dollars at the box office. So that
deal is seen as this incredible example of product placement.
But what one of the sources said was that seven
hundred people take credit for it. So anyone who had
any sort of hand in that deal is surely waving
(16:33):
their Flag and saying I helped, you know, get the
General Motors deal in Barbie. So to answer your question,
I think there's a lot of people who sort of
strive for that type of credit.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Well, I so appreciate your keen eye for a good
story and a good trend. That is absolutely the sweet
spot of what we're trying to get at every day
here at Variety and Ethan. Thank you so much for
all of your great contributions.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Thanks so much, Cynthia.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
As we close out today's episode, here are a few
things we're watching for. If you grew up in the
nineteen eighties, you'll want to watch the new Netflix documentary
on Devo, We Are Divo. It's from director Chris Smith.
We'll be diving back to the seventies later this week
as we look at fifty years of industrial light and Magic.
My colleague Jazz Tanke will be on to discuss. Director
(17:27):
Darren Aronofsky is busy this month his nat GEO docuseries Limitless,
Live Better Now Bows August twenty fifth. It's hosted by
Chris Hemsworth. Four days later, Aronofsky's Austin Butler crime drama
Caught Stealing Bows in theaters Thanks for listening. This episode
was written and reported by me Cynthia Littleton, with contributions
(17:50):
from Ethan Shanfeld. It was edited by Aaron Greenwald. Sti's
Nick's hick Picks. Please leave us a review at the
podcast platform of your choice, and please tune in tomorrow
for another episode of Daily Variety.
Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and
analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Tuesday, August nineteenth, twenty
twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Lyttleton. I am co
editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in
LA He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around
the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode,
(00:29):
we'll talk with industry veterans Chris McGirk and Jana Winograde
about their new venture Microco. The pair explain why they
are investing in the super short, low budget micro drama
series that are a red hot trend in Asia right now.
And we'll talk with Variety reporter Ethan Shanfeld about how
AI is changing the business of product placement. But before
(00:53):
we get to that, here are a few headlines just
in this morning that you need to know. Next Star
has set a deal to a require Tegna for six
point two billion dollars. Next Star already owns about two
hundred TV stations. Tagna owns sixty four stations. This is
a big gamble that the FCC is going to change
the rules that limit how many stations a single company
(01:15):
can own, because otherwise Nextstar will be way over the
legal limit. This will be a long process at the FCC.
Jimmy Kimmel has not stopped speaking out about the cancelation
of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Love seeing the
camaraderie between those two guys. Don't miss Clayton Davis's interview
with Kimmel on Variety dot com right now. And ESPN
(01:39):
has parted ways with Spike Lee on his Colin Kaepernick docuseries,
The culprit Is Creative Differences. All of these stories and
so much more can be found on Variety dot com
right now. Now we turn to conversations with Variety journalists
and industry leaders about news and trends in show business today.
(02:00):
My guests are Chris McGirk, chairman and CEO of Cineverse,
and Jana Winograde, who is CEO of Microco. They are
teaming with two other well known executives, Lloyd Brawn and
Susan Rovner to dive into the new world of micro series.
Chris McGirk and Jana Winograde, thank you so much for
joining me to talk about your new venture.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Thanks very much, Cynthia.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Well, let's start at the beginning. You two have come
together in a new venture that is also act by
Lloyd Braun's Banyon Ventures. It's called Microco and you are
focusing on the emerging world of microdramas, which is definitely
something that Variety has been tracking coming out of Asia
in particular. Chris, let's start with you. You've been with Cinaverse
(02:47):
for over a decade. How did this venture come together?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, it came together very quickly actually, and you know,
we've been looking at centavers for new ventures at the
leading edge where the industry is going, where we could
apply the assets that we built over the years. We
own our own streaming and content management technology called Matchpoint.
We've got over one hundred engineers in India who keep
advancing that technology, building AI tools. We've got thirty streaming
(03:16):
channels with the eighty million monthly viewers, more than fifty
podcasts at this point, in a library of over seventy
thousand titles. And we used all those assets a year
ago to launch a movie called Terrifier three, which I
think shot the industry and it did ninety million dollars
worldwide and we have less than a million in marketing
(03:37):
because we used all those assets, these kind of new
age assets to market the movie in a kind of
unique way and go after the fan bases, the streaming
channels and podcasts that really captured in our social media footprint.
So we were looking for the next big thing to
apply those assets against, and micro jamas kept coming up.
(03:58):
It seemed like a business that had just exploded overseas
and really what it needed was a platform here domestically
in order to create and distribute that kind of content
in a blow cost and effective way. And so we
moved really really quickly to get a deal done with
Lloyd and Company and bring Janna on board and announce
this thing because we think there's a Ugit managed to
(04:19):
being a first lover here domestically, you know as well.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well between the four of you, there is a lot
of collective experience at networks, at studios. Janet, tell me
how you plugged into this venture.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, Susan Roepner and I have been friends for thirty years.
We started on our first day together at ABC, and
after she left NBCU and I left Showtime, we really
had a strong feeling we wanted to work together. We
have incredibly complementary skill sets and incredible respect for one another,
and we've been really looking at a number of things
(04:54):
to do, and when we heard about micro dramas, it
really felt like an area where we could take what
we love to do best in storytelling and take that
where the consumers are now consuming content. Because storytelling never changed.
Great stories people always want to see them, They always
want to see characters. But what has changed is how
(05:16):
the audience consumes that content and what they watch and
on what devices, and how they want to engage with it.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So let me be clear, you will launch this on
the Cineverse platform, or you will have a dedicated micro
code platform.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
We're going to have a dedicated micro co platform, but
that is built by Cineverse with all the incredible technology
that they have.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
We don't have a name yet for that platform. It's
not going to be MicroC micro Co is a working
title of a corporate title. I think the other thing
that's important from a financial standpoint and a speed to
launch standpoint, we spent tens of millions of dollars over
the years already investing in the technology, in buying companies
(06:01):
to build out our social network to basically build out
our channel footprint.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Let me ask you a fairly blunt question, how is
this not Quibi?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I'll take that one. Katzenberg was prescient, but it's a
whole different world than it was in twenty twenty. Twenty
twenty was just a completely different time, not just in
terms of COVID, but consumers have embraced short form vertical
content in so many ways now and in ways they
just hadn't become really accustomed to at the time that
Quibi launched. So whether it's YouTube or TikTok, they're used
(06:36):
to the scrolling vertical behavior. It wasn't trying to bring
people on and teach them something new. We're not trying
to create that new behavior. We're expanding that behavior to
include narrative storytelling. Even the format that we're talking about
with microdramas. This is now an established format. It's been
prevalent in China for many years, it's prevalent in Korea,
(06:59):
it's in Eastern Europe, and they have brought their apps
here and those apps are doing incredibly well on the
app store. The truth of the matter is starting a
direct to consumer business is a really heavy lift and
that's what Katzenberg was trying to do. But we have
this Cineverse flywheels, so we're not starting from ground zero.
(07:20):
We'll have access to one hundred and fifty million fans
of genre content including horror and romance, true crime, and anime,
and the marketing tech to target them.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
How will you produce it? Are you calling up showrunners
and notable people or do you see this as something
that is coming more from the grassroots of the creator economy.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The way we're looking at this is a little bit
different in approach. We are not trying to make premium television.
We've done a lot of research into what is making
micro dramas and we're actually going to call the micro
series because we're not just looking at dramas, but we've
done a lot of research into what is making that
genre of content work for the audience.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Will you work with the union talent?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
We are figuring out now exactly how we're going to
be moving forward in the community. But we're really looking
at this we are not planning to do premium productions.
We are looking at price points that are well well
well below what a normal television production would be in
(08:24):
more in line with the microdrama budgets that the current
microdrama apps are using that probably will not be conducive
to the guild talent or big stars, but as a
general rule, we are really trying to stick with the
business model that makes financial sense.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
We all came out of the studio system, but we
see the turmoil that's going on in the business now
where literally tens of thousands of people have blust their jobs.
We're a company that prides itself on being a rebel company,
employing people and creating a new business that is going
to be great through the industry. I think is our
first and foremost subjective here.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
In addition to our originals, we do plan to have
a content creator vertical. The content creators are broadening out
to give their fans a more three to sixty degree experience,
and we feel like micro series can be a really
good pillar of that experience. We're sort of looking at
as a bridge between the creator economy as it currently
(09:27):
exists and the traditional studio produced series, or maybe the
better way to say it will be the intersection of
the then diagram, the overlapping slice, because right now what's
happening is the big studios and platforms are trying to
fit creators and influencers into long form, traditionally formatic content,
and not only is that a lengthy process for such
(09:49):
a fast moving space, but that's not how we're where
the audience is used to engaging with them. What we
can give creators is a more frictionless way to migrate
their current audience over to the different creators experience. And
then with the platform we're going to have, we're going
to be able to give them the ability to have
the social interaction they're used to having with creators, and
that's not something you can do in the traditional space.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Will this be entirely subscription or will you have some
ad support baked in?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
We will have a number of different monetization models. The
one thing we're clear on is we're not going to
have a very hard paywall when you first enter.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
When do you expect the first of this content to
hit the marketplace.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
We're talking about launch first quarter of next year, first
calendar quarter, and again it's going to be a mix
of licensed creator content and our own origional content. Over time,
our content will become much more of the percentage of
the following it. So we're thinking probably by next April,
we will launch the service. We've got a name.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
First, we'll ask listeners to send in suggestions. I want
to say thank you both for coming on and we
will absolutely stay tuned. We'll certainly rooting for you to
bring some much needed jobs back to this creative community.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Thanks Cynthia, thank you.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Next up, we'll hear from Ethan Shanfeld, who was a
variety reporter based in New York. He became intrigued at
how technology is changing the process of landing real life
brands in movies and TV shows. Ethan Shanfield, thanks for
joining me.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Thank you, Cynthia.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
You filed a story recently that got my attention. Why
product placement in movies and TV is peaking. It's a
great variety headline, Ethan. What was the spark for the story?
Speaker 4 (11:37):
So what first drew me to the story was I
met a young guy who works at UTA at a
networking dinner and he was telling me about a specific
placement that happened in season two of The Bear. And
what he said was basically that placement can make somebody's career,
like landing a deal like that, which the money behind
(11:58):
all these deals is very kept secret, but a lot
of them are seven figure deals. They involve broad sort
of ad spend across the network and then also sometimes
product placement, and so it got me thinking, I wanted
to do a story on two or three of these
big product placement deals that have happened in the past
couple of years on some of the buzziest shows on TV.
(12:20):
And so he set me up with some people at
UTA who work on these deals. And once we started
talking about the deals, what I noticed was that I
was sitting with a bunch of statistics people at a
Hollywood agency. What UTA has done is hired people who
specialize in product placement, and they've created this measurement system.
(12:43):
So if their client is Coca Cola, for example, which
was the example with the Bear, they can go to
Coca Cola and crunch all the numbers and say, well,
if you do a thirty second advertisement in the NBA Finals,
this is how many people are going to watch the ad.
You decide to put a bottle of Coke zero next
to iodebris character in a three minute scene in the Bear,
(13:07):
we don't know how many people are going to watch it,
but this might be more impactful for your brand. And
so for that example. Specifically, Coca Cola looked at some
early scripts from season two of The Bear. They helped
pinpoint a specific scene that worked with their campaign, which
at the time was called Recipe for Magic. The scene
(13:28):
is Iodebrie's character is they're sharing a slice of cake
with her and her dad on her late mom's birthday,
and it's very subtle that there's just a bottle of
coke sitting next to her. She doesn't drink it, it's
not the label is not clearly shown for much of
the scene, but clearly that was the right move for
Coca Cola, and a lot of people in the business
(13:48):
point to it as a very strong example of product placement.
It sounds like they're bringing data and AI tools to
analyzing the optimal frames to put in product placements. We
talked a lot about specific examples of product placement, the
trends that they're seeing in twenty twenty five. One of
the things I put in the piece is that product
(14:09):
placement has existed in Hollywood for basically as long as
film and TV have existed. It used to trickle down
from the networks. So, for example, ABC might have a
deal with Hershey Chocolate and it trickles down to the shows,
so they would come to the producers and say, we
need you to put Hershey's chocolate in this scene of
(14:29):
family matters or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I can definitely attest to it. As recently as ten
years ago, if a producer had come to ABC and said, oh, look,
I've done a placement deal for my show, they would
have gotten their handslab. This kind of stuff was completely
controlled by the network on the film side, by the studio.
But your reporting is showing that there are now a
lot more avenues to getting these deals done.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Absolutely, and what the product placement people are seeing is
not only that the producers are soliciting these deals, that
they're enthusiastic about them. Right now, as budgets are being
slashed in Hollywood, costs are ballooning, the producers are finding
these avenues to sort of cushion that.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
There's an interesting discussion in your story about the old
solution to this would be to come up with a
generic box of cereal that said Cereal on it. In
the world of hyperrealism that we live in, those kinds
of fake generic products almost take you out of the story.
It's better to see the box of tryskits or the
can of coke or the bottle of tied detergent.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
Yeah, that seems to be the mindset of a lot
of writers and producers.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I want to bring you back to something you said earlier,
which was that doing a great product placement deal can
be make or break for somebody's career. Was that for
marketing execs. Is there an emerging, very specific statistician discipline here.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
I think so. But one of the other things that
made me laugh while reporting this story was if you
ask any of these people what the holy grail of
product placement is in the last few years, a lot
of them will point to Barbie and the General Motors
partnership with Barbie, because you had all these scenes with
Barbie's dream car, you had all these cars on the
(16:11):
freeway in that car chase scene. In the real world,
you know, nobody knew that Barbie was gonna make one
point four billion dollars at the box office. So that
deal is seen as this incredible example of product placement.
But what one of the sources said was that seven
hundred people take credit for it. So anyone who had
any sort of hand in that deal is surely waving
(16:33):
their Flag and saying I helped, you know, get the
General Motors deal in Barbie. So to answer your question,
I think there's a lot of people who sort of
strive for that type of credit.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Well, I so appreciate your keen eye for a good
story and a good trend. That is absolutely the sweet
spot of what we're trying to get at every day
here at Variety and Ethan. Thank you so much for
all of your great contributions.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Thanks so much, Cynthia.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
As we close out today's episode, here are a few
things we're watching for. If you grew up in the
nineteen eighties, you'll want to watch the new Netflix documentary
on Devo, We Are Divo. It's from director Chris Smith.
We'll be diving back to the seventies later this week
as we look at fifty years of industrial light and Magic.
My colleague Jazz Tanke will be on to discuss. Director
(17:27):
Darren Aronofsky is busy this month his nat GEO docuseries Limitless,
Live Better Now Bows August twenty fifth. It's hosted by
Chris Hemsworth. Four days later, Aronofsky's Austin Butler crime drama
Caught Stealing Bows in theaters Thanks for listening. This episode
was written and reported by me Cynthia Littleton, with contributions
(17:50):
from Ethan Shanfeld. It was edited by Aaron Greenwald. Sti's
Nick's hick Picks. Please leave us a review at the
podcast platform of your choice, and please tune in tomorrow
for another episode of Daily Variety.
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