CW Unveils Commercials With a Plot Twist

The soon-to-be launched CW network announced Thursday that it was developing a new way to advertise on TV: a hybrid commercial that would use story lines to promote products in three two-minute segments dotted throughout an evening of programming.

And in keeping with its new name, which borrows the C from CBS Corp. and the W from Warner Bros. Entertainment, the melded network, which debuts in September, has dubbed these new ads “content wraps.”

It helps to think of a content wrap as a sandwich. The products that advertisers want to sell are the meat. The mini-programming elements wrapped around them are the bread that holds it all together and -- in CW executives’ dreams, at least -- makes consumers want to take a bite and keep on eating.

“It’s entertainment,” said Dawn Ostroff, entertainment president for the new network, which is a combination of the best programming from the soon to be defunct WB and CBS-owned UPN networks. “This is a way to keep viewers with us throughout the night.”

This year at the television industry’s annual upfront presentations for advertisers here, Madison Avenue’s new buzzword is “engagement.” Studies have shown that TV viewers remember the ads that appear in their favorite programs, or the shows that they are emotionally invested in.

This week, as the networks have unveiled their new fall schedules, each has pleaded for its share of the expected $8.5 billion in prime-time advertising commitments that will be made in the coming weeks. More than 90% of the networks’ ad revenues will come from traditional 30-second, on-air spots.

Although advertisers and networks have experimented with long-form commercials in the past, industry experts said that no network had ever undertaken such an ambitious project to try to build a serialized advertisement that unfolds over a night of programming. The goal is to provide an incentive for viewers not to get up, zone out, or zip through ads on Tivo.

Ad buyers appeared receptive. “It’s an interesting way of addressing some of the issues that we all face,” said Marc Goldstein, chief executive of ad-buying powerhouse Mindshare North America.

Andrew Jung, senior director of advertising and media for cereal maker Kellogg Co., said, “As long as it is done appropriately, it’s a very, very smart idea. It’s a great way to hold on to an audience.”

Given the complexity of launching a joint production with an advertiser, however, the CW plans to start out small, producing only seven or eight of the three-part ads each season. Executives admitted that they have yet to line up their first sponsor.

On Thursday, CW unveiled a sample three-part ad in which a geeky guy was made over, went on a date and then bantered about whether there would be another date (talking about products all the while).

Bill Morningstar, the CW’s head of advertising, would not say whether the network will have to charge a premium for content wraps because of the coordination and production costs involved.

The content wrap’s unveiling signals a subtle distancing by the network from another much-lauded advertising strategy: product integration, in which a network requires writers and producers to weave a product such as Oreo cookies into a show’s story line.

Although networks have embraced product integration, the Writers Guild of America has cried foul, warning that such forced intertwining of commercialism not only ruins storytelling, but will drive viewers away.

If such clearly identified ad-vignettes can strike viewers as less crass, some ad buyers said, they might cut through the clutter.