TurboTax Continues a An Annual Tradition of Branded Entertainment with NBC

Community is my new favorite primetime comedy. Joel McHale finally gets to stretch his wings (a long way from his Burger King days), supported by a brilliant ensemble cast featuring Donald Glover from Derrick Comedy and Chevy Chase.

Last night’s episode, “Investigative Journalism” (now on Hulu), featured cameos from Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and TurboTax. Yes, everyone’s favorite DIY tax software got an unbranded mention in the first minute of the episode, as a feature of a fictional hyper-realistic video game (“You can even do your taxes.” “But don’t get audited, cuz that’s bad.”).

Then the first commercial break kicked off with a sneaky spot that featured Ken Jeong (in character as Spanish professor Señor Chang) and Jim Rash (in character as Dean Pelton) in what appeared to be the Greendale Community College cafeteria from the show. Jeong/Chang had a laptop in front of him and was pretending to interview Rash/Pelton about what it takes to be the Dean, but was actually doing his taxes with TurboTax — the Dean quickly discovered that he had only been invited so that Professor Chang could write off his lunch. (I haven’t been able to find a video yet, but I’ll post it when I do.)

Cute spot, but really a seamless integration of the show — if you had DVRed the episode, you certainly wouldn’t have fast-forwarded over it. Another great example of a TiVo-proofed spot on what is presumably a highly timeshifted network show. TurboTax ran a similar $20 million integration with NBC this time last year.

TurboTax is also running its own integration on NBC.com, featuring all of NBC’s Thursday night comedies. I didn’t stick around for Parks and Rec last night, but perhaps there were branded entertainment integrations during that episode as well.

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