MTV Canada: Movie Award tie-ins, new VEVO deal

The teen-friendly CTV channel announces Canadian brand integrations for the US-based MTV Movie Awards, including Starbucks and Blackberry. Also announced: Much MTV Group to handle Vevo sales in Canada.

By Katie Bailey
June 4, 2010

It’s always one of the most entertaining award shows of the year, and MTV Canada is allowing Canadian brands to get in on the action for the broadcast of the US-based 2010 MTV Movie Awards.

Blackberry, Starbucks, Wind Mobile, Harvey’s, Stouffer’s, and Sony Pictures (for The Karate Kid) have signed on with the channel for brand integrations (broadcast interstitials and social media executions) and traditional ad buys. The MTV Movie Awards will air Sunday June 6 at 9 p.m. ET.

Blackberry is promoting its BBM instant-messaging service with an interstitial integration with MTV Canada host Johnny Hockin. Viewers will be invited to add Hockin to their BBM list – via his PIN or by taking a photo of his barcode on the Blackberry microsite on MTV.ca – and messages to and from Hockin will be broadcast live. Starbucks is in the mix with an integration that will see Hockin sipping on Frappuccinos all night, custom-made for him in accordance with the brand’s new ‘How-you-want-it Frappuccino‘ promotion. Wind Mobile will be featured as the sponsor of the Twitter feed, which appears live on the MTV Movie Awards microsite and will feature Wind’s brand colours. The other sponsors are represented via logos, on-air ads, and online big-box and pre-roll ads.

In a separate move today, CTV’s Much MTV Group also announced that it has forged a partnership with Vevo, a US-based music video and entertainment programming network. Vevo’s content is available via Vevo.com, Vevo on YouTube, AOL and CBS Interactive Music Group properties. Under the new deal, Much MTV Group will represent the company’s inventory and ‘client solutions’ in Canada.

Ad opportunities include pre-roll video, overlays, standard display units, sponsorships of original artist content and artist video premieres, and customized brand partnership integrations. Much MTV Group will also be partnering with ‘select key sponsors’ to support the official partnership with Vevo in Canada, a spokesperson for the network told MiC.

Vevo properties receive, overall, an average of 7.7 million unique visitors from Canada each month, according to ComScore. A release on the announcement also stated that the Vevo network has ‘commitments’ from over 75 brands in the US, including AT&T, Unilever and Ford currently in place.