As the cruel sun rose three weeks ago upon a Web world of flimsy advertising models and failing cybersoaps, the dashing crew at A Prime Connection - a year-old Web site based in Bath, England, and previously known for hosting an online furniture store - launched a serial whose sole purpose is the selling of product placements within its own stories.
"We believe people are tired of having adds thrown in their face," says Simon Marshland, co-director of APC and the Bath Soap's writer. "Some are frankly antagonistic." His site follows what he describes as "a more subtle approach." Thus far the approach is subtle indeed, as no ads are included in the first three episodes. Assuming that the unsponsored tales of intrigue set in a "huge, great, bloody international company" will have attracted enough attention to the site by now, however, APC plans to include six placements in next week's story.
Though serials have a Web history in the US - where sites like Eon-4 and The Spot gained wide popularity before their publisher declared bankruptcy last January - the concept is relatively untested in the home nation of Upstairs, Downstairs and East Enders. Marshland knows of only one other British soap start-up, and it is, he says, "quite serious. We don't intend to be serious."
There's not much danger of that, as his story seems to have skipped the initial period of relative subtlety and proceeded directly to the style of self-parody that many soaps resort to in a bid to restore excitement late in the story line. With characters such as Bamber de Vere - who has followed a "varied career enjoyed with several bigamous wives leading to a brief enforced stay at Her Majesty's expense" - and a graphics-and-grammar-be-damned approach to production, APC is making a product fully worthy of the US$40 price of its placement spots.
"It's not very expensive," Marshland admits, "but hopefully it will become so." Especially once APC presents what he calls - in a manner almost worthy of the soap's slickly ambitious businessman Feeney Tralee - "a marvelous new scheme" to involve sponsors in the creation of story lines. Such revenue ploys were parodied before they ever existed in Carl Steadman's site placing.com, launched in mid-1996.
APC should be sure to keep its day clients, however, says Charles Platkin, whose East Village serial has experimented with product placements from such deep-pocket clients as Tanqueray and the MTV Video Music Awards. "I think placement is one of the few strong ways of making money, but there's a problem with the economics" of Web soaps in general. At this point in the Web's development, novelty is not enough to attract viewers, he says, and "unfortunately the Web audience is not there to support the cost to produce high-quality entertainment."
Ah, the "world-famous glittering" cast of the Bath Soap may have more tragedy in store than the writer can predict.
