At first glance, the worlds of advertising and entertainment appear very different: one wants to sell you things and the other wants to, well, entertain you. Examining a bit deeper though, and they both rely – and succeed or fail – on the same cognitive and behavioural process of gaining and keeping our attention. Logically, since they both require the same input and can use each other’s strengths to widen their collective audience, it only makes sense to combine them, and when we do, we get today’s word.
Unsurprisingly, advertainment is a portmanteau of advertising and entertainment. The gerund of the verb advertise, from the Latin advertere, meaning ‘to direct one’s attention to’, advertising is first recorded in use in the British daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, writing on 29 November, 1717, that: “The Person entitled thereunto..may have the Money for the said Bill, paying the Charge of the Advertizing.” For the slightly older entertainment -which can first be found in Sir Thomas Hoby’s 1561 translation of The Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione, stating: “One..whom she to show him a good countenance, desired to dance with her, and he refusing both that, and to hear music and many other entertainments offered him” – its roots can be found in the Old French entretenir, meaning, in the case of an audience’s attention, ‘hold together or stick together’, as well as the suffix -ment, which forms the abstract noun. The term advertainment, as a form of media that seeks to combine a form of entertainment with aspects of promotional advertising for specific products or brands, first entered the English lexicon in 1987, via the Spring issue of the Canadian Journal of Educational Communication, where an article by Gary M. Boyd observed that: “Both advertainment and peer or colleague pressure are terribly dominating influences, the former largely mediated by technology.”
Compared to more traditional types of advertising, advertainment can offer specific advantages. First and foremost, it can offer a subtle-yet-specific way to increase product awareness and association for a target market without appearing to be blatantly “selling” it. Second, well-positioned advertainment can be a cost-effective way for a brand or product to stand out from the competition. Finally, alluded to in the first point, by meeting the audience in the realm of entertainment (as opposed to direct advertising), advertainment has a greater potential to foster a stronger personal attachment with a brand.
Though the word may be slightly over 3 decades old, the concept goes back much further. In fact, the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, Wings (1927), featured a prominent placement of Hershey‘s candy; moreover, branded entertainment, such as Red Bull’s Stratos space jump, involving skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s 127,900-foot freefall from space in 2012, can be considered the modern iteration of the likes of Camel Caravan (Camel cigarettes), which debuted in 1933, as well as Kraft Television Theatre (Kraft Foods) and The Bell Telephone Hour, both of which debuted in the 1940s.
As for whether or not the concept can be successful, take the example of the company that accepted the offer to appear in a 1982 movie about an alien when Mars’ M&Ms rejected the offer – being featured in a pivotal moment of the E.T. blockbuster, Hershey’s brand, Reese’s Pieces, saw sales increase by 65%, solely based on this exposure.
