On March 21st Slovenian TV station Pop TV started broadcasting the show Slovenia’s got talent. It is a talent show that features singers, dancers, magicians, comedians and other performers of all ages competing for the advertised top prize of 50.000 EUR. It’s a licensed programme – a part of the Got Talent franchise, conceived and owned by Simon Cowell‘s SYCO company. It has spawned spin-offs in over 30 countries, in what is now referred to as the Got Talent format, similar to that described by FremantleMedia of the Idol format.

Both formats (Got Talent and Idol) have some similiarities. Among them there is a three-member jury, with drinks on their tables, which is a great opportunity for product placement. The most famous placement is Coca-Cola from American Idol.

The most famous placement from Idol series - Coca-Cola in American Idol

You could see the unmistakable Coca-Cola’s logo on a red cup. This is very important, because camera constantly switches between contestants and the jury. So it is necessary that the logo of the brand is clearly visible (unless the brand can arrange some close-ups as a part of the product placement deal).

Here’s another example from the Croatian version – Hrvatska traži zvijezdu.

Bottle of Cedevita in the talent show Hrvatska traži zvijezdu (RTL, 2010, screen capture)

As you can see, there is a bottle of local brand Cedevita – there is a unique bottle and a clearly visible logo.

Now we can analyse product placement from Slovenian version of the talent show. Each member of the jury has two bottles in front of them – one is for Zala water and the other for Fruc juice. Unfortunately those two bottle are not recognizable as they could be. This is especially the case when watching bottles of water. The majority of water-bottles are very similar – the only difference is usually their logo (below you can see some examples – I intentionally make the pictures very small). But even though the bottle of Zala is a bit different than other bottles (it is square and not round shaped), the transparency of water makes recognition of logos almost impossible.

Images of various water bottles on Slovenian market

In case of Fruc juice the situation is better. The juice and the bottle are in my opinion quite recognisable in Slovenia.

There are also some positve elements of this product placement – the bottles are not always full, so we can assume that members of the jury were thirsty. We also have a proof – below you can see that Brane Kastelic drank some water/juice during the show.

Product placement in the talent show Slovenija ima talent (Pop TV, 2010, screen capture)

It the future the brands that would be involved in the product placement in Slovenia’s got talent should consider changing the bottles with cups or provide bottles that would be more recognisable. In my opinion a unique cups, designed specially for Slovenia’s got talent, would be the best solution. They would be very visible and would also generate some positve PR.

2 Comments
  1. Wow! This blog looks just like my old one! It’s on a totally different topic but it has pretty much the same page layout and design. Wonderful choice of colors! Thank you!