Nationwide gets “Streetwise” with it’s marketing

Back in February, Ofcom relaxed it’s rules over the use of product placement in TV programmes as a means of marketing products & services, and Jim blogged an entry challenging students to spot the first placements.

So I award a big ‘shout out’ to one of my Upper Sixth students, Yazz Dickson, for spotting the announcement of a product placement deal before it even became live, after making me aware of this story a few days ago. Whilst there have been a few placements in daytime and off peak shows, this is the first prime-time deal that has been struck in the UK to date.

Since the story broke a couple of weeks ago, the afore mentioned placement has begun and eagle-eyed Corrie fans may well have spotted a new branded ATM in Dev’s store. I’m not a regular viewer of Corrie, but perhaps I’ll tune in to take a look.

As a former employee at Nationwide I find this quite an interesting story as it demonstrates a search for new ways of marketing their brand to the public. During my time at the organisation, there was a high profile football sponsorship deal both with the Football League and the FAs of the 4 home nations, and also the support of the Mercury Music Prize. Nationwide have since ended these relationships, and will have marketing budgets to spend in other ways.

It will be interesting to see whether this 4 month deal proves successful and leads to both Nationwide extending the deal and others following suit. So far, many feel their has been a very low uptake from the big brands that may have been expected to take advantage of this new opportunity. There is a view that firms are concerned about falling foul of the new rules, and of course they may be waiting for someone to test it out first.