Warner Bros. has a search engine!? :)

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A friend recommended the TV show Traveler to me. So far, I really like it! But watching it I just realized just how much my viewing habits have changed, how ubiquitous product placement can be and just how much can go just into the details of a TV show (also realized what a complete dork I am.:))

So, imagine this scene: the two protagonists (Jay and Tyler) need info on companies/stock trades/people (happens when you've been implicated in a terrorist attack), so naturally they do what everyone else does: they use a search engine.
Except they don't google, they use something called "Kazew." The site (as shown during the show) had a ridiculously large Web 2.0-ish logo on the top left and plain vanilla Yahoo-ish results page.

I couldn't resist, especially with my laptop just open: typing in "kazew.com" take you to the Warner Bros. homepage. They produced the show for ABC. The whois entry for the kazew domain, shows that they had Markmonitor, a fraud prevention/brand protection company register the domain for them.

I can't help wondering what the motivation for this was. Was this Warner Bros. trying to get some consumer-facing publicity? A product placement-thing that didn't work out? or just something interesting for an internet-savvy, obviously not-too-busy audience to find? :)

Comments

Faisal said…
Yeah, you'd think that these production houses would finally wise up to the fact that their audiences aren't complete tech neophytes. Why not put in 5 minutes more and think about how you're going to display a search page? Or heck, don't show it at all. Even that would be better than the "kazew" hilarity.
2:19 PM
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