Welcome to LateNighter’s Spon-Con Watch. In-show advertising is as old as late night itself, but as shows face declining ratings and shrinking budgets, sponsored content (or “brand activations,” as they’re called in marketing circles) has become increasingly common and, at times, more elaborate than ever before. In this recurring feature, we keep tabs on how late-night shows are working to wed commerce with comedy.
The holiday shopping season has officially arrived, and late night’s most popular hosts are getting in on the action.
On Tuesday night’s Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon introduced a brand-new game show titled Pick! Pick! Pick the Box!, with Amazon Prime as its sponsor. The gameplay is simple enough: Before the show, one lucky audience member is chosen to play, and shares their favorite hobby with the show’s production team. In last night’s episode, we met Stef from Chicago, who loves to play beach volleyball—which is the main hook of the game.
Sitting in front of Stef were three Amazon boxes of varying sizes, one of which contained something that related to her sport of choice. All she needed to do was choose which of the three otherwise nondescript boxes she liked best (with members of the audience shouting their own preferences), and whatever was inside would be her prize.
In order to help Stef choose wisely, Tonight Show announcer Steve Higgins offered some not-so-helpful “clues,” which were more about showcasing the online shopping behemoth itself (unless you consider knowing the dimensions of each box, and that “they’re all made with single-walled corrugated cardboard” helpful).
Ultimately, Stef chose Box Number 1, which meant she went home with a pair of goggles for a dog (which she may or may not have). The specially chosen prize was in Box Number 3: a bag of genuine Florida sand.
In the end, Stef got an extra surprise: a $500 Amazon gift certificate. Fallon then pulled a seat number and gifted a second member of the audience with the same.
Fallon’s new segment arrived just two days after Jimmy Kimmel launched a new Google Shopping-branded game show, Can You Gift It?, with Benny Blanco and Eric André as his first contestants.
While Kimmel’s campaign with Google will run through December 5, there’s no word on if or when we’ll see another edition of Pick! Pick! Pick the Box! But if we had to venture a guess, we’d say—with 28 shopping days ‘til Christmas—it seems very likely.
