What Many Reporters Missed In Their 'Big Bang Theory' Product Integration Stories

Bill Prady is a co-creator and executive producer of the hit CBS comedy "Big Bang Theory," and he apparently disagrees with a story from NielsenWire that lists his show as having three of the top ten "Most Remembered Brand Integrations, Dramas/Sitcoms."

Prady tweeted these comments on Tuesday, after stories built on the Nielsen data began hitting the Internet:

"I'm not aware of #bigbangtheory doing any paid product placement. We use real brand names so dialogue doesn't sound fake."

"The product placement issue came up because a news report notes our mention of Purell was the most recalled brand name on a TV show."

And Prady has a point. Here is an explanation of the list, according to Nielsen:

Data from January 1, 2011 – November 30, 2011. Broadcast Prime. The Recall Score is the percentage of television viewers who can recall within 24 hours the brand/product of a branded integration they were exposed to during the normal course of viewing Dramas/Sitcoms. These scores are then indexed against the mean score for all integrations occurring in this genre during the time period (Recall Index). 100 equals average.

Note: For this analysis, branded integrations were only considered if the occurrence had visual elements (i.e., was “seen” on-screen) or both visual and auditory elements (i.e., was both “seen” and “mentioned”). Only first-run episodes were considered. Both planned and incidental exposures were included.

What the explanation doesn't cover is whether the integration was paid for by the advertiser, or was the mention included in the script simply because it made sense in the context of the show? It's a small but important distinction, and one that many reporters seemed to have missed as they were writing their stories today.

What this list does illustrate is that product mentions work best when they are truly integrated into the storyline. Most paid integration efforts appear grafted onto a script after the fact and this list seems to reflect my sense that those efforts are much less successful than the network sales departments are claiming.

On a related note, I would also be curious to see a similar list for cable TV, since cable networks have in general tended to be more aggressive when it comes to courting brand integration deals.