TV's New Brand of Stars

摘要

Each week, the cast of abc's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edi-tion" faces a tough task— completely rebuild and transform every room in a house in just seven days. An even tougher task, it seems, would be to make hardware and appliances a heart-tugging emotional sell. Yet this reality hit, which airs at 8 o'clock on Sunday and is watched by 14 million to 15 million viewers, manages to do just that for Scars, its main sponsor. The chain's Ken- more appliances and Craftsman tools play front and center as the crew goes to work and designers go shopping. At the end of a recent episode, host Ty Pennington unveiled the completely rebuilt home of the Vardon family of Detroit (lucky families are sent on a vacation while the work is done). The emotional payoff for the family—the parents are both deaf, and one son is blind and autistic—is authentic and effective. And so is the marketing ploy for Sears, whose research shows that viewers are 25 percent more likely to shop at Sears after the show. The retailers' executives—who worked with ABC on the show before it existed and, in September alone, spent $3.2 million (a Nielsen estimate) on ads with ABC—refer to this kind of advertising as an "enhanced television media buy." But that's just jargon. Call it what it is: a pitch-perfect pitch.