Though viewers tuning into Thursday night’s Tonight Show may not have realized it, Marcello Hernández and Kenan Thompson’s visit with Jimmy Fallon was more directly transactional than most.
Sure, most talk show guests are booked to promote something, but usually the talk show isn’t being paid to have them on.
The brand doing the paying in this case was T-Mobile, which has enjoyed a long promotional relationship with Saturday Night Live. The mobile carrier recently worked with the SNL team to produce a new commercial starring Hernández and Thompson, which debuted in a commercial break during the show’s Timothée Chalamet-hosted episode last month.
In addition to its commercial airplay, the ad has yielded three different videos on Saturday Night Live’s social channels: the ad itself, an on-set video, and a look at the recording process with SNL music director Eli Brueggemann—plus several behind-the-scenes videos with Thompson and Hernández on T-Mobile’s own social media.
Similar packages appear to have been offered to each of SNL‘s key sponsors of its landmark 50th season, with Allstate, Capital One and Maybelline all producing ads featuring the show’s cast members past and present, with similar behind-the-scenes content being shared by SNL.
Thursday night’s crossover to another show entirely (albeit one still within the Lorne Michaels/NBC late night family) was a new twist, and the first case that we’re aware of where what appears to be a regular guest booking ends up being a brand activation.
Introducing the duo, Jimmy Fallon first touted SNL’s upcoming anniversary special before adding, “They also have a new commercial out with T-Mobile.”
Though they did cover other topics, a large portion of the interview that followed centered around the duo’s T-Mobile ad, as well as another ad that Hernández filmed with his mom for the mobile carrier.
After showing viewers a 20-second clip from the ad, Thompson and Hernández took part in a (intentionally failed) rap battle based on words from Fallon’s Random Word Generator. In service to T-Mobile, the game’s usual blue-hued graphics were replaced with the carrier’s pink, and the selected words were all on-brand: “magenta,” “voice,” and “phone.”
Before going to break, Fallon told viewers to stay tuned for the duo’s full T-Mobile commercial, which was slotted as the lead ad in the commercial break.
Though it wasn’t disclosed as sponsored content when it aired, the YouTube upload (above) of the T-mobile portions of Thompson and Hernández’s visit is tagged “in Partnership with T-Mobile,” as is the show’s custom.
