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LG’s Scarlet - It’s Time to Brand Your TV

You’ve probably seen it by now.

What looks like a commercial for a new TV show or movie, turns out to be a commercial for a line of HDTV sets from LG called Scarlet. (Check out the video below if you haven’t seen it already.)

It seems like it was a successful campaign, in that it garnered lots of press attention including a red-carpet fake premiere with (fake) celebrities and lots of mentions on the Internet.

However, I’m more interested in the fact that this is one of the first TVs that are branded. And it’s about time. Everything else around us has branded names. Think of cars (Toyota Avalon, Ford Taurus), MP3 players (iPod, Zune), cell phones (LG’s Chocolate, Motorola’s Razr or the iPhone)–heck even condoms have brand names (Trojan, Magnum). So it’s about time that TV sets are becoming brands that consumers can identify.

LG’s Scarlet line of sets don’t really push the bar as far as new or advanced features, it just has a good brand name. And the back of the TV is red, too. So it doesn’t take much beyond lots of advertising dollars, an online viral marketing campaign, and a new product to begin promoting a new brand.

Why aren’t other TV set manufacturer’s doing this? I mean, Sony, which came up with Walkman, and Vaio, should have a good TV brand. Panasonic does have the Viera line of TV sets, but it reminds me too much of Good Morning America’s Meredith Viera to really have a brand impact with me.

Having a name like Scarlet, also makes it easy for consumers to find reviews and prices on the Internet. You don’t have to remember that the Scarlet is product number AZTX-4208, for example. (I just made that up.) Just Google “Scarlet” and TV and up comes results to help you shop and compare.

Brands. It’s what people want. People share with others what brand their new cell phone is. And consumer electronic manufacturers should realize that people want to show off their new HDTVs also. And let’s include DVRs also. Tivo has done pretty well as the top brand of DVRs, but distinguishing different product lines is kind of tricky. Tivo’s Series 2, or Series 3 DVRs are boring names. Why not the Tivo Magum? Or um, something like that.

[tags] Tivo, LG, Scarlet, branding, advertising, HDTV, TV [/tags]

Tags: Advertising, branding, HDTV, LG, Scarlet, Tivo, TV   Posted in Advertising, Hollywood, Sony, Tivo