Branded Content initiatives

Walmart and Procter & Gamble (P&G) are teaming to produce family-friendly TV programming and begin this effort with the 2-hour TV movie Secrets of The Mountain, which will premiere on NBC on April 16, 2010.

Family-friendly TV commercials from both companies will run during the movie's breaks and, per the WSJ, it will also feature an array of product placements during the movie, and that P&G is spending $4.5+ million to produce the TV movie.

Secrets of the Mountain is described as a drama-adventure about a single working mother who takes her family to a mountain cabin they inherited from their eccentric uncle, where they set off on an adventure.

The partnership falls under Walmart's new Family Moments, a marketing, in-store and digital family-centric entertainment initiative. P&G is co-founder, and Walmart is c0-fhiar with P&G, of the Alliance for Family Entertainment (f/k/a Family Friendly Programming Forum), a group of about 40 national advertisers, which is supported by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).


Ameba, a Winnipeg-based IPTV system for kids' entertainment, prepares for the North American launch of AmebaTV.com ( www.amebatv.com ) by taking delivery of proprietary set-top boxes in preparation. This new portal aims to deliver commercial free, kid-targeted entertainment directly to television viewers via the web.

AmebaTV.com's library includes 500 hours of live-action and animated kid-centric content from producers including Decode Entertainment, Breakthrough New Media, Casablanca Kids, Sockeye, Marble Media, Portfolio, TVO, Compugraf, Blender, Agogo Entertainment, Ingaldson-Smith Productions, and Janet's Planet, National Film Board, among others.

Sprite is inviting teens to express their creativity via music and film in its first global integrated marketing campaign, The Spark, which takes its name from Sprite's newly updated Spark logo. The campaign includes TV commercials, an online interactive music mixer featuring content from music artist Drake and a digital film mixer, aimed at inspiring teens to interact and be creative. The Spark launches this year first in North America, and then across Europe, Africa and Asia. The new campaign will be showcased at the NBA All-Star 2010 this weekend, which will feature a soundtrack by Drake. A range of different artists will be featured in The Spark campaign around the world. Sprite is part of The Coca-Cola Company.