With sponsorship and brand integration opportunities still wide open, Steven Sabados and Chris Hyndman — the original Designer Guys — will debut their new daily talk show on CBC at 2 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 14. The live-to-tape talker will be shot with studio audiences.

The key strengths of Steven and Chris from a marketer’s POV begin with the fact that its cohosts ‘are a very well-known Canadian brand that’s even famous outside Canada, especially after they appeared on Oprah,’ says Jamie Michaels, CBC’s director of marketing and brand activation.

‘Also,’ he adds, ‘it’s a daily show, and it’s got a live studio audience with that kind of feel — which we believe we can really capitalize on in working with sponsors on contesting, giveaways and, ideally, brand integration and branded segments.’

Michaels says the one-hour show’s focus on hot trends and topics ranging from home décor to fitness, fashion, cooking, entertaining and relationships mean ‘there’s no question it targets women, so it will work very well for female-skewed products. And we want to leverage that with our sponsors.’

Regular segments announced so far include the ‘Steven and Chris Twist,’ during which the hosts will interact with designers, celebrities, chefs and various experts. They’ll also get the studio audience and home viewers in on the action with contests, giveaways and makeovers. Typical of guest spots to come is the appearance on Monday’s show of Sofia Milos — star of CSI: Miami and CBC’s new The Border series — during which she will share her ‘Fabulist’ of the top five things she would smuggle across the 49th parallel.

All of which logically make marketer exposure on Steven and Chris desirable. The hosts are so high-profile that their frequent public appearances — such as one they did in December for the opening of Home Depot Canada’s ‘Project’ prototype store in Richmond Hill, ON — invariably draw excited crowds and often end up on TV news clips.

Yet Michaels says no sponsors have been signed up so far. ‘We’re launching with just standard advertising. Our next step is finding a sponsor or sponsors.’

The fact that CBC hasn’t leveraged the notoriety and popularity of Sabados and Hyndman in advance of their show’s debut is ‘a shock,’ says Scott Stewart, a director at Toronto-based Genesis Vizeum. ‘What a huge opportunity for an advertiser to get in on the ground floor. I’m just mystified as to why CBC wouldn’t have already shopped out sponsorships.’

Stewart adds that neither he nor his agency’s broadcast supervisor

were notified of the show’s launch date. ‘In fact, I only found out that these enormously well-known guys were starting a talk show by reading about it in Toronto Life — just yesterday. Otherwise, I would have had no idea.’

From Media in Canada