The hype around branded content says that the combined forces of audience fragmentation and advanced commercial avoidance technologies will have the effect of devaluing commercial spots to a point where advertising will need to look for an alternate common currency. Proponents insist that with its ability to integrate a brand’s message directly into the flow of programming, branded content is the best logical substitute.

But many of those familiar with the practical applications see branded content in somewhat more realistic terms. To them, integrating branded messages into the flow of programming is one part of the strategic puzzle and is unlikely to stand out any better than promotional golf balls or billboard advertising.

‘Branded content will have and has had a role in the mix, but I wouldn’t characterize it as meat, vegetables or salad. I would characterize it as garnish and really nothing more than that,’ says Mark Sherman, president of Montreal/Toronto-based media buying firm The Media Experts.

That is not to say it does not have value. Indeed, as such brand integrations evolve, both producers and marketers are discovering that branded content has a value that goes well beyond raising production funds or a brand’s profile.

In its boiled-down form, branded content is just a newfangled word for product placement, the age-old practice of dropping a logo into the narrative flow of a movie or television program. More recently, however, the level of this integration has been hitting new creative heights.

It is a process that culminated in 2000 through Federal Express’ multimillion-dollar involvement in the film Cast Away, which featured a FedEx employee who after years trapped on a desert island not only survives, but also manages to deliver his parcel in the end.

As anyone who has seen Cast Away will attest, product placement is but a small morsel in a heavy dish laden with brand references.

In television, two of the most active programs in the space are Friends and Survivor, both of which make excellent use of strategically placed brands and brand references. But few programs have taken the concept further than Lions Gate Television’s No Boundaries.

The show, which was cancelled in the U.S. but continues to put up decent numbers for its Canadian broadcaster, Global Television, is nothing short of the broadcast equivalent of Cast Away.

Sponsored entirely by Ford, No Boundaries follows 15 participants on a 30-day race from Vancouver Island to the Arctic Circle. The U.S. car manufacturer not only put up more than 80% of the funds for the $500,000-per-episode production, it also played an active role in the planning and execution of the series (through its Detroit ad agency, J. Walter Thompson).

At the beginning of each show, shots of Ford sport utility vehicles are featured in the titles. In most episodes, if not all, contestants climb in and out of Ford SUVs to get from point A to point B. The Ford Explorer Sport Trac is mentioned each week as part of the prize package. Even the title No Boundaries is drawn directly from Ford’s tagline.

Such deep involvement can raise all kinds of alarms among those concerned with maintaining some formal divide between content and advertising.

But Kevin Beggs, president of TV production for Lions Gate, says that the car company’s involvement at no point jeopardizes the series’ integrity.

‘Everything that we’re doing, we would have been doing. If you see the original show [71 Degrees North, a format owned by the Scandinavian Broadcasting System and optioned to Lions Gate], they also had to clamber into vans. [Ford’s] involvement was completely organic to the show. We didn’t reverse engineer the show to fit them at any point.’

This is an important point, because while there seems to be no limit to the lengths producers and marketers will go to juice audiences with branded messages, apparently there is a limit.

‘What you have to be careful of when you’re doing branded content is that you’re selective,’ says Jeff Copeland, VP and executive producer at Toronto-based Millennium Media Television, which produces the teen lifestyle show Bang TV, also airing on Global.

‘For instance, if you’re doing teen programming you have to be very careful to make sure that the brands involved are brands that your audience perceives as hip.

‘You have to be very careful that the brand suits the programming that you’re putting out there.’

Case in point, Bang TV, which targets young males through a combination of extreme sports coverage and urban music, has two sponsors that are regularly integrated into the show, Mountain Dew and HMV. Both hold a certain cachet with Bang TV’s viewers and as a result are legitimate participants in the program flow, whether it be the host boarding in Mountain Dew swag, or music discussions with an HMV buyer.

Copeland says there is also the concern that being too overt in brand integration will turn the audience off a program so the references often need to be as subtle as possible.

Of course the other side of the coin is that brand managers need to be equally discerning in what types of programs they align themselves with and how they are used.

According to Sharon MacLeod, brand manager for Unilever Canada’s Salon Selectives, which sponsors Popstars, the reality show is a perfect mirror of the brand’s positioning. Popstars is a show where hundreds of participants from across the country – mostly young women – audition in hopes of being chosen to record and tour as members of a new pop group.

‘It’s just a perfect fit with our target consumers,’ she says. ‘It felt like it was custom-made for the brand.’

In order to leverage its sponsorship – aside from buying airtime on the show – Salon Selectives recently created a contest promotion with Shoppers Drug Mart that awarded young women the opportunity to hang out with the members of the newly formed group.

Chris Geddes, director of sales and marketing at Toronto-based Lone Eagle Entertainment, producer of Popstars, says the working relationship is kind of a closed loop. For example, it allowed Salon Selectives to go on tour with the show and set up displays and sampling programs at auditions. At the same time, the production turned its cameras onto the displays to get content for the program.

‘Now for our purposes and the story line, we have kids playing with their hair, which is fun…somebody staring at themselves before their big audition. That in turn relates back to us and it creates compelling content with brand interaction,’ he says.

The mutually beneficial relationship in the case of Salon Selectives and Popstars illustrates just how multilayered branded-content relationships can get.

While a brand can leverage its relationship with a program in its promotions and other communications, a program can similarly leverage its relationship with a brand. This is a particularly cogent point in the Canadian production market where programs are in a perpetual life-and-death struggle for eyeballs.

Linda Schuyler, creator and executive producer of Degrassi: The Next Generation (CTV), has been enlisting the help of title sponsor Tampax for just that reason.

Prompted by an episode revolving around a girl’s first period, Tampax held a contest in which the winner got two of the show’s stars to sit down with the girls of her school for a powwow on issues important to young women, including menstruation.

While Schuyler insists the show was written without any input or influence from Tampax, the subject matter made for a perfect fit.

In the end, what such relations accomplish for a producer is to get a show’s stars involved in important promotional appearances at virtually no cost.

‘We need to get as many people as possible knowing we’re out there,’ says Schuyler. ‘Degrassi: The Next Generation is still a very young show. Our big objective is to get it ordered for a third season.’

Leveraging the show’s relationship with its sponsors is one the best vehicles to help it accomplish just that.

With files from Susan Zeller.