Another advertiser is joining in a popular trend, producing and sponsoring live content that can be watched online.  The advertiser is Norton, the provider of online security tools that is owned by Symantec, and its plan is to present 24 hours of original content on its Facebook page as part of what it calls Stuff Theater.  The mini-marathon will be from Wednesday at 9 a.m. (Eastern time) to 9 a.m. Thursday. About 60 performers will participate, bringing to life posts, like status updates that appear on the walls of Facebook pages.  In teaser video clips, produced to give an idea of what Stuff Theater will be like, a puppet shouts the name “Haley”; an opera singer belts, “I have a chicken pot pie craving”; and a woman dressed like a Shakespearean actor declaims a line about sweat in an, um, personal part of the anatomy.  Stuff Theater, which will be performed from the Copernicus Theater in Chicago, is part of a campaign for Norton that carries the theme “stuff,” declaring that Norton protects the content online you consider important and valuable.  Stuff Theater is being produced by two agencies that work on the Stuff campaign, Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide in Chicago, both part of the Publicis Groupe. The budget is not being disclosed.  The trend that Stuff Theater is part of is called branded entertainment, by which advertisers incorporate themselves into the plots of movies, TV shows and online videos. The goal is to avoid being zipped or zapped like conventional commercials.  Offering live programming is a subset of the trend, as evidenced by a promotion in January sponsored by Hewlett-Packard called “H.P. ePrint Live.” That promotion took place on YouTube, rather than Facebook.  The goal of the Norton effort is to “use a bit of humor and personal experience” to “get attention and be relevant,” said Sally Jenkins, vice president of worldwide consumer marketing for the consumer business unit at Symantec in Mountain View, Calif.  Ms. Jenkins estimates that during the 24 hours, the actors, singers, dancers, acrobats, puppets and others hired to take part in Stuff Theater will bring to life 1,000 Facebook posts.  Those Facebook members who would like a post performed can click on “Yes, I want my stuff performed on Stuff Theater” on the Norton Facebook fan page.  “Internet security is a burdensome subject,” said Dave Loew, executive vice president and executive creative director at Burnett. “We’re trying to find a way to say that protecting stuff is front and center, part of our digital life.”  Jon Wyville, also an executive vice president and executive creative director at Burnett, called Stuff Theater an effort to “put your social-media stuff on a pedestal and treat it with the importance it deserves, even if it’s as mundane as a Facebook update.”
As part of its advertising theme of "stuff," the online security company plans to stage Stuff Theater, live from Chicago; actors will bring to life the random thoughts of Facebook users.