Yesterday, we reported that How I Met Your Mother is eerily incorporating new advertisements for current films like Zookeeper into syndicated reruns. Today, the phenomenon continues with new screen shots showing a Bad Teacher poster in a 2006 episode of the CBS hit sitcom, but this time we finally have a more detailed explanation of the time-travel marketing courtesy of Entertainment Weekly.
After stumbling upon evidence of retroactive Bad Teacher marketing (an ad for the 2011 Cameron Diaz/Justin Timberlake comedy appears in an episode of HIMYM that originally aired in November, 2006), Entertainment Weekly tracked down Seamless Brand Integration, the company that 20th Century Fox (How I Met Your Mother's home studio) has been working with to, well, seamlessly integrate new brands into their old products.
In an effort to continue monetizing syndicated content, Seamless Brand Integration digitally inserts ads two or three times per episode based around events in the storyline. The company can continually change the ads in that episode for future re-airings (Robin's Zookeeper DVD could become a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 DVD depending on when the episode re-airs) and can also insert different ads in different markets to ensure maximum marketing pull for each syndicator.
In addition to inserting posters and DVDs, the company can also switch out cell phones, hotels, cars and beverages guaranteeing that the latest models and brands are being represented.
Seamless Brand Integration has already done this kind of work on My Name Is Earl (as commenter SunnyDaze pointed out yesterday) and Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
ยท 'How I Met Your Mother': Why are ads for new movies like 'Zookeeper' popping up in old reruns? [EW]