(A guest blog from our intern, Ken)

With the growing popularity of DVRs and TIVOs we have all become quite accustomed to product placement these days in movies and television shows. Being a fan of creative advertising, I will be the first to admit that I don’t mind smart, classy product placement. A lot of the time it can even enhance the story line…think FedEx in Castaway and even GM in Transformers. Both of these brands tied in great to the story and made the movie a better movie.  Heck, even when it’s done so over the top and on purpose it doesn’t bother me (think Wayne’s World) because I can just take it for what it is.

But what about when it’s not done well at all? This is where my gripe begins. Last night during the series premiere of NBC’s new show The Philanthropist, Microsoft’s new search engine Bing featured a new type of ad integrating show content with paid advertising. Twice during the hour-long episode, the show was interrupted with the message “The Philanthropist is sponsored in part by Bing”. Following this, the show started back up again…or did it?  These ads mixed show content with paid placement of the Bing logo. From what others have said on Twitter, I was obviously not the only one confused as to whether or not this was part of the episode or not. What was a pretty good premiere of a television show was ruined for me by these ads that did not tie well into the plot at all. Did they really expect me to believe that this woman actually whipped out a laptop in the middle of a market in Nigeria to search about cholera on Bing?  Even if they didn’t mean for it to be believable, why even bother with all these other outlets available?

I do not understand the strategy behind this move at all. In a world where consumers are yearning to connect personally to brands, Microsoft and Bing missed the boat with these ads. I wonder if before deciding to do this they tried running it through the “decision engine” that is Bing. A lot of money was spent for that sponsorship that could have been used in new media to actually interact and build a meaningful relationship with potential consumers. Instead of trying to pull consumers into the Bing brand, they decided to stick with the traditional and push the brand into the mind of the consumer. Unfortunately they pushed it right to the point where I will not be able to make myself use it. Have we not learned anything about pushing a message versus pulling consumers in? There will be the obvious increase PR hype about these ads (like people blogging about it), but over the long term Microsoft will realize that they lost some consumers that were more than willing to listen about a new search engine. Consumers that will now turn elsewhere to brands that will engage and interact with them.

Here are the ads if you care to see them, but do so at your own risk.