For those pf you who do not watch “The Apprentice,” you may not know that this week’s task was a major piece of product placement for Domino’s Pizza. Well, Pappa John’s got a bit of a boost from the show despite their largest competitor being featured so prominently in a hit show. Here’s what SFGate.com wrote about it:
After reading a press release about Domino’s involvement with the NBC reality show last week, Kentucky-based Papa John’s quickly launched their Spicy Meatball Pizza on Monday and filmed an ad featuring founder and chairman John Schnatter in a boardroom setting asking, “Why eat a pizza made by apprentices when you can call the pros at Papa John’s?”
“We decided to do this within the last seven days so with that timing we were not able to secure national network time,” Sternberg said. “But we were able to do local market buys throughout the country.”
That’s some spicy Competitive Intelligence, and a pretty ballsy advertising buy to boot! Most impressive was the competitor’s method of circumventing competitive product placement in television programming. I suspect the timing was not the only issue in Pappa Johns inability to purchase national network time, but likely a reluctance on the part of NBC to sell them ad time and potentially piss off Trump or Mark Burnett (the executive producer of The Apprentice). One thing to perhaps watch for in high profile product placements with television networks to add clauses that prohibit affiliates from selling commercial time to competitors.
