Product placement, or embedded marketing, is a form of advertisement, where branded goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, music videos, the story line of television shows, or news programs. The product placement is often not disclosed at the time that the good or service is featured. Product placement became common in the 1980s.
In April 2006, Broadcasting & Cable reported, “Two thirds of advertisers employ ‘branded entertainment’—product placement—with the vast majority of that (80%) in commercial TV programming.” The story, based on a survey by the Association of National Advertisers, said “Reasons for using in-show plugs varied from ‘stronger emotional connection’ to better dovetailing with relevant content, to targeting a specific group.”
Early examples
Product placement dates back to the nineteenth century in publishing. By the time Jules Verne published the adventure novel Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), he was a world-renowned literary giant to the extent transport and shipping companies lobbied to be mentioned in the story as it was published in serial form. If he was actually paid to do so, however, remains unknown. Product placement is still used in books to some extent, particularly in novels.
Self-advertising: A German countess holds a copy of the magazine Die Woche in her hands. The photo appeared in 1902 in an issue of Die Woche (detail of the actual photograph)
With the arrival of photo-rich periodicals in print business in the late 19th century publishers found ways of lifting their paper’s reputation by placing an actual copy of the magazine in photographs of prominent people. For example the German magazine Die Woche in 1902 printed an article about a countess in her castle where she in one of the photographs actually holds a copy of Die Woche in her hands.
Recent scholarship in film and media studies has drawn attention to the fact that product placement was a common feature of many of the earliest actualities and cinematic attractions that characterized the first ten years of cinema history.
Placement in movies
Recognizable brand names appeared in movies from cinema’s earliest history. Before films were even narrative forms in the sense that they are recognised today, industrial concerns funded the making of what film scholar Tom Gunning has described as “cinematic attractions” these were short films of no longer than one or two minutes. In the first decade or so of film history (1895–1907) audiences did go to see films as narrative art forms but as fairground attractions interesting for the amazing visual effects they appeared to be. This format was much better suited to product placement than the narrative form of cinema that came later when film making became a more organised industry. Taking this as a starting point, Leon Gurevitch has argued that early cinematic attractions share more in common with the adverts that emerged from the television industry in the 1950s than they do with traditional films. Gurevitch suggests that as a result, the relationship between cinema and advertising is more intertwined than previous historians have credited, suggesting that the birth of cinema was in part the result of advertising and the economic kickstart that it provided early film makers. Kerry Segrave details the industries that advertised in these early films and goes on to give a thorough account of the history of product placement over the following century. In the 1920s, the weekly trade periodical Harrison’s Reports published its first denunciation of that practice with respect to Red Crown gasoline appearing in the comedy film The Garage (1919), directed by and co-starring Fatty Arbuckle.
During the next four decades, Harrison’s Reports frequently cited cases of on-screen brand-name products, always condemning the practice as harmful to movie theaters. Publisher P. S. Harrison’s editorials strongly reflected his feelings against product placement in films. An editorial in Harrison’s Reports criticized the collaboration between the Corona Typewriter company and First National Pictures when a Corona typewriter appeared in the film The Lost World (1925). Harrison’s Reports published several incidents about Corona typewriters appearing in films of the mid-1920s.
Product placement in movies
Product placement is an investment for brands trying to reach a niche audience as consumers to focus interest for a particular product. There are strong reasons for investors to expect that film product placement increase consumer awareness and enhance brand attitude. It is important to analyze also the worth or investment of a product in a film. A high cost feature film that has expectations of grossing millions attract many product attention but the film studios has to analyze if a product fits with the image of the film. Having a high-end star adds more attention towards a product and becomes a separate negotiation terms with his or her contract. Firms paid $722 million in fees, free product placement, and promotional support for film placement in 2005, and by 2010, spending on film placement is predicted to surge to 1.8 billion. In 2002 Volkswagen spent a estimated $200 million in fees to be integrated into NBC Universal films.
Among the famous silent films to feature product placement was Wings (1927), the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It contained a plug for Hershey’s chocolate.
Another early example in film occurs in Horse Feathers (1932) where Thelma Todd’s character falls out of a canoe and into a river. She calls for a life saver and Groucho Marx’s character tosses her a Life Savers candy.
The film It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), directed by Frank Capra, depicts a young boy with aspirations to be an explorer, displaying a prominent copy of National Geographic.
In the film Love Happy (1949), Harpo Marx’s character cavorts on a rooftop among various billboards and at one point escapes from the villains on the old Mobil logo, the “Flying Red Horse”. Harrison’s Reports severely criticized this scene in its film review and in a front-page editorial of the same issue.
In the film noir Gun Crazy (1949), the climactic crime is the payroll robbery of the Armour meat-packing plant, where a Bulova clock is prominently seen.
In other early media, e.g., radio in the 1930s and 1940s and early television in the 1950s, television programs were often underwritten by companies. “Soap operas” are called such because they were initially underwritten by consumer, packaged-goods companies such as Procter & Gamble or Unilever. When television began to displace radio, DuMont’s Cavalcade of Stars television show was, in its era, notable for not relying on a sole Sponsor (commercial) in the tradition of NBC’s Texaco Star Theater and similar productions. Sponsorship exists today with programs being sponsored by major vendors such as Hallmark Cards.
The conspicuous display of Studebaker motor vehicles in the television series Mr. Ed (1961–1966), which was sponsored by the Studebaker Corporation from 1961 to 1963, is another example of product placement.
Incorporation of products into the actual plot of a film or television show is generally called “brand integration”. An early example of such “brand integration” was by Abercrombie & Fitch when one of its stores provided the notional venue for part of the romantic comedy film Man’s Favourite Sport? (1964) starring Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss.
The 1995 film GoldenEye was the focus of a highly successful BMW campaign, devised by product placement specialist Karen Sortito, which promoted the automaker’s new Z3 model. Sales of the Z3 surged as film claimed the top spot at the box office. For the next film in the James Bond franchise, Tomorrow Never Dies, Sortito created a $100 million promotional campaign that included tie-ins with BMW, Visa, L’Oréal, Ericsson, Heineken, Avis, and Omega SA. The film brought in more than $300 million dollars.
A recent example is HBO’s Sex and the City (1998–2004), where the plot revolved around, among other things, Absolut Vodka, a campaign upon which one of the protagonists was working, and a billboard in Times Square, where a bottle prevented an image of the model from being pornographic. Knight Rider (1982–1986), a television series featuring a talking Pontiac Trans Am, is another example of brand integration.
The earliest example of product placement in a computer or video game occurs in Action Biker (1984) for Skips crisps, a product by KP Snacks. This is incorrect. The earliest placement is in 1982’s Pole Position by Atari which has billboards along the track for other Atari Games. Then at the end of 1982 with Pole Poisition II the in game billboards were paid adverts for Dentine gum and some other items. Video games, such as Crazy Taxi (1999), feature real retail stores as game destinations. However, sometimes the economics are reversed and video-game makers pay for the rights to use real sports teams and players. Today, product placement in online video is also becoming common. Online agencies are specializing in connecting online video producers, which are usually individuals, with brands and advertisers.
Self promotion
Twentieth Century Fox, a subsidiary of News Corporation, has promoted its parent company’s own Sky News channel through including it as a plot device when characters are viewing news broadcasts of breaking events. The newscaster or reporter in the scene will usually state that the audience is viewing Sky News, and reports from other channels are not shown. One notable example is the film Independence Day (1996).
Sports
Product placement has long been prevalent in sports as well, from professional sports to college sports, and even on the local level with high school sports. This can be attributed to sports being prevalent on television, which increases exposure to these products.
The Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, was originally built to have such advertisements, but since 1947 has largely been devoid of such advertisements. The Citgo sign overlooking Fenway Park can also be considered a form of product placement, despite the Boston Red Sox having a sponsorship deal with Gulf Oil.
Outside of baseball (which had long had sponsors), product placement in sports began to rise in the 1970s, when NASCAR began to allow sponsors to cover the cars they were sponsoring with their logos. (For instance, STP was a longtime sponsor for Richard Petty.) This has subsequently followed with the uniforms the drivers themselves wear having sponsor logos. The Arena Football League, NFL Europe, and several association football leagues eventually allowed sponsors of the uniforms.
The National Hockey League began allowing sponsors to line along the interior walls of the ice rinks in the early 1980s. This, combined with new rules mandating players to wear helmets (though some were grandfathered), arguably gave the NHL a different look in the 1980s than compared with the 1970s.
NFL
While the now-defunct NFL Europe allowed liberal use of sponsors with the team’s uniforms, the main National Football League (NFL) has long been more stringent. For instance, the league prohibits logos of sponsors painted onto the fields, although Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, does have a disposable razor painted onto the field in honor of naming-rights sponsor Gillette. In 2008, the league allowed sponsors on the practice jerseys of the uniforms, but not the game-worn uniforms.
The NFL’s strict policy contradicts several other policies on the uniforms. In 1991, the league allowed the individual uniform suppliers to display their logo on the products they made in conjunction with the rest of the sports world, and since 2002, Reebok has been the official uniform supplier for the entire league.
In addition, two of the league’s flagship teams—the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers—adopted some form of their identity from corporate sponsors. The Packers adopted the nickname “Packers” because they were sponsored by the Indian Packing Company, and later had “ACME PACKERS” written on their uniforms in the early 1920s after the Acme Packing Company bought Indian Packing. The Steelers adopted their current logo in 1962 as a product-placement deal with the American Iron and Steel Institute, which owned the rights to the Steelmark logo. The Steelers later were allowed to add “-ers” to the Steelmark logo the following year so that they could own a trademark on the logo.
Going the other way, the league has been shown to place itself as the product. NFL Japan was a sponsor of the football themed anime series Eyeshield 21, which ran for 145 TV episodes and a handful of specials.
Categories and variations
Actual product placement falls into two categories: products or locations that are obtained from manufacturers or owners to reduce the cost of production, and products deliberately placed into productions in exchange for fees.
Sometimes, product usage is negotiated rather than paid for. Some placements provide productions with below-the-line savings, with products such as props, clothes and cars being loaned for the production’s use, thereby saving them purchase or rental fees. Barter systems (the director/actor/producer wants one for himself) and service deals (cellular phones provided for crew use, for instance) are also common practices. Producers may also seek out companies for product placements as another savings or revenue stream for the movie, with, for example, products used in exchange for help funding advertisements tied-in with a film’s release, a show’s new season or other event.
A variant of product placement is advertisement placement. In this case an advertisement for the product (rather than the product itself) is seen in the movie or television series. Examples include a Lucky Strike cigarette advertisement on a billboard or a truck with a milk advertisement on its trailer.
Another variant is the widespread use of promotional consideration in which a television game show would award an advertiser’s product as a prize or consolation prize in return for a subsidy from the product’s manufacturer.
Product-placement companies work to integrate their client company brands with film and television productions. Jay May, president of Feature This!, a branded entertainment company, explains the process: “The studio sends us the script. We break it down. We look for our clients’ demographics and then we tell our client this movie is available with this actor, with this director, with this producer, do you want it?”. Some product placement companies, including http://www.boxofficebrands.com, make finding a brand integration deal easy and affordable, opening up the market to small to mid-size companies with smaller marketing budgets.
Measuring effectiveness
Quantification methods track brand integrations, with both basic quantitative and more demonstrative qualitative systems used to determine the cost and effective media value of a placement. Rating systems measure the type of placement and on-screen exposure is gauged by audience recall rates. Products might be featured but hardly identifiable, clearly identifiable, long or recurrent in exposure, associated with a main character, verbally mentioned and/or they may play a key role in the storyline. Media values are also weighed over time, depending on a specific product’s degree of presence in the market.
Consumer response and economic impact
As with any advertising, its effectiveness tends to be assumed because advertisers continue to use product placement as a marketing strategy. However, some consumer groups such as Commercial Alert object to the practice as “an affront to basic honesty” that they claim is too common in today’s society. Commercial Alert asks for full disclosure of all product-placement arrangements, arguing that most product placements are deceptive and not clearly disclosed. It advocates notification before and during television programs with embedded advertisements. One justification for this is to allow greater parental control for children, whom it claims are easily influenced by product placement.
The Writers Guild of America, a trade union representing authors of television scripts, had raised objections in 2005 that its members are forced to write ad copy disguised as storyline on the grounds that “the result is that tens of millions of viewers are sometimes being sold products without their knowledge, sold in opaque, subliminal ways and sold in violation of government regulations.”
According to PQ Media, a consulting firm that tracks alternative media spending, 2006 product placement was estimated at $3.1 billion rising to $5.6 billion in 2010. However, these figures are somewhat misleading in PQ Media’s view in that today, many product-placement and brand-integration deals are a combination of advertising and product placement. In these deals, the product placement is often contingent upon the purchase of advertising revenues. When the product placement that is bundled with advertising is allocated to part of the spending, PQ Media estimates that product placement is closer to $7 billion in value, rising to $10 billion by 2010.
In a June 2010 research report, “PQ Media Global Branded Entertainment Marketing Forecast,” the research firm reported that paid product placement spending – in television, films, internet, video games and other media – declined in 2009 for the first time in tracked history, as spending decreased 2.8% to $3.61 billion due to severe reductions in brand marketers’ budgets resulting from the difficult economic environment. However, paid product placement is also one of the sectors poised for the most growth, with PQ Media predicting the 2009 figures to more than double by 2014, when product placement is projected to be a $6.1 billion market.
A major driver of growth for the use of product placement is the increasing use of digital video recorders (DVR) such as TiVO, which enable viewers to skip advertisements. This ad-skipping behavior increases in frequency the longer a household has owned a DVR.
Products
Certain products are featured more than others. Commonly seen are automobiles, consumer electronics and computers, and tobacco products.
Automobiles
The most common products to be promoted in this way are automobiles. Frequently, all the important vehicles in a film or television series will be supplied by one manufacturer. For example, the television series The X-Files (1993–2002) uses Fords, as do leading characters on the television series 24 (2001–2010).
The James Bond film series pioneered such placement. The Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) features extensive use of AMC cars, even in scenes in Thailand, where AMC cars were not sold, and had the steering wheel on the wrong side of the vehicle for the country’s roads. The two prior Bond films use vehicles from Ford or its subsidiaries.
Almost every car was made by General Motors in the films Bad Boys II (2003), The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and Transformers (2007).
In the film XXY (2007) all vehicles depicted are Toyotas, even though the film takes place in South America; the film’s credits acknowledge the automaker as having funded portions of the film’s production.
Other times, vehicles or other products take on such key roles in the film it is as if they are another character. Nissan cars feature prominently in the television series Heroes (2006–2010) where the logos often zoom in/out of or whole cars are shown for a few seconds at the beginning of a new scene. In the film The Matrix Reloaded, a key chase scene is conducted between a brand new Cadillac CTS and a Cadillac Escalade EXT. The chase scene also features a Ducati motorcycle in the getaway.
Three of the Bond films that star Pierce Brosnan feature a BMW car. After pressure from fans, the producers returned to using the traditional Aston Martin, which was owned by Ford Motor Company at the time and thus brought in more product placement.
A Ford Shelby GT500 is used extensively at the beginning of the film I Am Legend (2007) along with a Ford Expedition EL.
In the film Taken (2008), Liam Neeson’s character drives Audi cars, first an A3 and then an S8 in the final high-speed scene on the streets of Paris, France.
All the cars in the video game Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (2008) are manufactured by Dodge.
Consumer electronics and computers
The film Casino Royale (2006) features many Sony product placements throughout: A BD-R disc is prominently portrayed at one time, all characters use VAIO laptops, Sony Ericsson cell phones and global-positioning systems, BRAVIA televisions, and Bond uses a Cyber-shot camera to take photographs. (It was the first Bond film to be produced after Sony acquired the Bond franchise). In Quantum of Solace (2008), Bond, M, and Tanner are seen using a Microsoft Surface to display information on rogue agents.
Apple frequently pays for product placement. This occurs because Apple “barters” the exchange for placement. Payment for placement is not in cash, but exchanged for product and services. (Notably, recognizable Apple products have appeared in newspaper comic strips, including Opus, Baby Blues, Non Sequitur, and FoxTrot, even though paid placement in comics is all but unknown.) In a twist on traditional product placement, Hewlett-Packard computers now appear exclusively as part of photo layouts in the IKEA catalog in addition to placing plastic models of its computers in IKEA stores, having taken over Apple’s position in the Swedish furniture retailer’s promotional materials several years ago. Hewlett-Packard also put their computers in the U.S. production of The Office. Throughout the television series Smallville (since 2001), only computers produced by Dell are used, including Alienware branded equipment and in later series the XPS range. Similarly in the series Stargate Atlantis in first sessions all the laptops used were Dell Latitude and XPS laptops. Stargate SG1 in its last seasons switched from traditional CRT monitors in the gate-rooms to Dell-branded LCDs.
In WarGames (1983), the use of an IMSAI 8080 desktop computer was originally proposed by Cliff McMullen of Unique Products, the same Los Angeles product placement company that placed Reese’s Pieces in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Other WarGames product placements include the main character’s mother being portrayed as a real estate broker at the behest of marketers at Century 21.
In the film Splash (1984), a television set blares advertisements for (now-defunct) electronics retailer Crazy Eddie and for Bloomingdale’s department store.
In the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) various Microsoft devices—including mobile phones, laptops, and Microsoft Surface—were used.
In video games, products that most often appear are placements for processors or graphics cards. For example in EA’s Battlefield 2142, ads for Intel Core 2 processors appear on map billboards. EA’s The Sims contains in-game advertising for Intel and for McDonald’s.Rare’s Perfect Dark: zerofeatures many adds for samsung in their menu’s.
In the video game F.E.A.R, all of the laptops have a Dell screensaver on them and the other computers in the game also feature this screensaver. Similarly, Metal Gear Solid 4 features various Apple products such as laptop and desktop computers, as well as featuring an in-game iPod. Most characters in this game have Sony cellular phones.
In the television series Sex and The City, the character Carrie is shown using an Apple PowerBook G3 laptop.
In the video game Burnout Paradise advertisements in the virtual Paradise City are placed as they may be in the real world, including travelling vans with advertisements for Gillette Fusion razors and DIESEL clothing, and on various billboards.
Food and drink
In Beetlejuice (1988), Minute Maid juice is displayed; in the Back to the Future trilogy, Pizza Hut’s future products include an instant pizza that can be hydrated for immediate consumption.
In Godzilla (1998) Pepsi, Hershey’s, and most prominently Taco Bell, are featured in various scenes.
The film “One, Two, Three” (1961) Stars James Cagney as a Coca Cola executive in West Berlin. The twist at the end is he removes a bottle of Pepsi from a vending machine at the end of the film.
In American Idol Coca-Cola cups are always seen on the judges’ table.
In Eminem’s music video Love the Way you Lie (2010), Stolichnaya vodka was included in several scenes. The product placement begins with actor Dominic Monaghan stealing a bottle of the vodka, after which he and actress Megan Fox drink from it on the roof of the liquor store.
In the game Need for Speed: Most Wanted there are several adds for Burger King, such as bilboards and restaurants.
In addition to placing brand specific elements within the context of a given program, entire formats of media have been created to feature individual brands within the context of a genre. An example of this is The Corkscrew Diary (2006), in which this travelogue about wine and food features emerging destination estates and the wines they produce.
Travel
The promotion of individual travel destinations and services ranges from subtle to overt.
While the award of “an all expense-paid trip” to some destination as a game show prize or an acknowledgement in a show’s closing credits that transportation for participants was provided by a specific airline had long been commonplace in commercial television, a more refined approach to promoting a travel destination is to assist and subsidise film production companies willing to set their story in or shoot footage on-location at the destination being promoted.
A movie set in an individual travel destination can be a valuable advertisement. According to State of Florida film commissioner Paul Sirmons, “the movies create huge, larger-than-life ads for where they are shot. CSI: Miami draws people from overseas to Miami. Seaside, was put on the map by ‘The Truman Show [(1998)] Movies just keep playing year after year getting the images out there.”
The television series The Love Boat (1977–1986) was set aboard the Pacific Princess, a ship of the Princess Cruise Lines. As an advertisement, this product placement was valuable enough that printed advertisements for the line would employ the trademarked slogan “It’s more than a cruise, it’s the Love Boat” until 2002.
A fictional Pan Am “Space Clipper,” a commercial spaceplane called the Orion III, had a prominent role in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, featured in the movie’s poster. The film’s sequel, 2010, also featured Pan Am in a background television commercial in the home of David Bowman’s widow. In the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, one of the ships in the fleet is a “Pan Galactic” or “Pan Gal” starliner. The ship bears Pan Am colors and the Pan Gal logo is nearly identical to Pan American’s old logo.
The airline’s 707 appeared in several James Bond films including Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Casino Royale, while a Pan Am 747 and the Worldport appeared in Live and Let Die. The airline’s logo was featured in Licence to Kill, where James Bond checks in for a Pan Am flight that he ultimately does not board.
Tobacco
Tobacco companies have made direct payment to stars for using their cigarettes in films. Documentation of $500,000 in payments to Sylvester Stallone to “use Brown and Williamson tobacco products in no less than five feature films” is accessible online as part of the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.
The James Bond film Licence to Kill (1989) featured use of the Lark brand of cigarette and the producers accepted payment for that product placement. The studio’s executives apparently believed that the placement triggered the American warning notice requirement for cigarette advertisements and thus the movie carried the Surgeon General’s Warning at the end credits of the film. This brought forth calls for banning such cigarette advertisements in future films. Later releases of License to Kill, especially for video and television releases, had the Lark pack replaced with a similar-looking, generic pack. Most movies, such as the youth-targeted Ramen Girl, which has a product placement for Marlboro cigarettes, omit the Surgeon General’s Warning.
Reviewing previously secret tobacco advertising documents, the British Medical Journal concluded:
The tobacco industry recruits new smokers by associating its products with fun, excitement, sex, wealth, and power and as a means of expressing rebellion and independence. One of the ways it has found to promote these associations has been to encourage smoking in entertainment productions.1 Exposure to smoking in entertainment media is associated with increased smoking and favourable attitudes towards tobacco use among adolescents.
While the tobacco industry has routinely denied active involvement in entertainment programming, previously secret tobacco industry documents made available in the USA show that the industry has had a long and deep relationship with Hollywood. Placing tobacco products in movies and on television (fig 1Go), encouraging celebrity use and endorsement, advertising in entertainment oriented magazines, designing advertising campaigns to reflect Hollywood glamour, and sponsoring entertainment oriented events have all been part of the industry’s relationship with the entertainment industry.
— How the tobacco industry built its relationship with Hollywood, BMJ 2002
Radio, television and publishing
Reality television
Product-placement advertisements can be common in reality television shows. For example the well-known Russian television show дом-2 (phoneticly Dom-2) (similar to Big Brother) often features one of the participants stating something along the lines of: “Oh, did you check out the new product X by company Y yet?” after which the camera zooms in onto the named product. It has been claimed that the participants get paid for it. Recently in the United States series The Real World/Road Rules Challenge participants often state a similar line, usually pertaining to the mobile device and carrier a text message has been received. “Extreme Makeover has several sponsors with prominent placement deals: Sears, Ford and Pella Windows to name three. Seeing the designers go off to Sears every episode and deck out the house with Kenmore appliances, is not just a sponsorship, it’s integral to the subject family getting their lives back.”.
Public and educational television
In the United States, most educational television operates under a funding model in which local stations receive donations from “Viewers Like You” but do not interrupt programming directly with spot advertising. While the use of underwriting as a form of indirect advertisement (“Production [or local acquisition] of this programme is made possible by X, makers of Y”) is permissible and common on non-commercial educational stations, price comparisons or calls to action (“Buy X now, ten cents off, this week only!”) of the form used by commercial television are expressly prohibited as a condition of the station’s license.
It may therefore make good business sense for an underwriter of an educational programme to obtain greater visibility through a form of promotional consideration in which (for instance) a manufacturer of woodworking tools could, instead of merely donating money to fund production of a popular home-improvement show, go one step further by also providing the tools used on-air to build the individual projects.
This approach is suitable both for commercial and non-commercial television, but requires very careful targeting to match a product to a show that naturally would already use that product. A program-like commercial The Learning Channel’s Trading Spaces is an ideal fit for a vendor such as Home Depot. Non-commercial broadcasts such as PBS’s The New Yankee Workshop would represent an ideal fit for power tool makers Porter-Cable, Delta Machinery and Vermont-American while a program like The Red Green Show could represent an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a manufacturer of duct tape.
One unusual placement is American Public Television’s Classical Stretch, a long-running series of physical fitness lessons hosted by Montréal’s Miranda Esmonde-White with the first three seasons distributed by New York Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) primary member station WPBS-TV. As the market for physical-fitness advice is largely saturated, Classical Stretch endeavours to differentiate itself from the many existing programmes in its genre by having everything take place outdoors, on a tropical beach, with unobtrusive classical music in the background. In theory, this could prohibitively increase a non-commercial program’s production costs; in reality, the costs of relocating production and constructing necessary facilities are readily borne by the show’s underwriters, a travel company and a luxury resort in Riviera Maya, Mexico.
Television programs
List of television shows with the most instances of product placement (11/07–11/08; Nielsen Media Research)
The Biggest Loser – 6,248
American Idol – 4,636
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition – 3,371
America’s Toughest Jobs – 2,807
One Tree Hill – 2,575
Deal or No Deal – 2,292
America’s Next Top Model – 2,241
Last Comic Standing – 1,993
Kitchen Nightmares – 1,853
Hell’s Kitchen – 1,807
Advertiser-produced programming
In 2010 Wal-Mart teamed with Procter & Gamble to produce Secrets of the Mountain and The Jensen Project, both family-oriented, television films which feature the characters using Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble- branded products. The Jensen Project also features a preview of a not-then-released Kinect, the new motion controller for microsoft’s Xbox 360.
Comic publishing
South African football comic Supa Strikas uses product placement within its pages to promote a variety of brands, and allow for the comic’s free distribution to its readers around the world. Product placement occurs throughout the publication; on the players’ shirts, through placed billboards and signage, and through the branding of locations or scenarios.
Globally, Supa Strikas receives the majority of its support from Chevron, which sponsors the comic series through its Caltex and Texaco brands. These brands are displayed as the shirt sponsors for the Supa Strikas team across Southern Africa, Central America, Egypt and Malaysia.
In other markets—where Chevron lacks a presence—other headline brands sponsor the team’s kit, including Visa in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania; GTBank in Nigeria; and Henkel’s Loctite brand in Brazil. In addition, other brands also receive advertising in the comics and animation, with their logos included as both billboard and background advertising, and through the branding of locations and scenarios. These companies include Metropolitan Life, Nike, Spur Steak Ranches and the South African National Roads Agency, among others.
This innovative approach to comic publication has seen the brand grow dramatically over the last few years, with Supa Strikas now reaching an estimated ten million readers a week worldwide. Today, the comic is available across Africa (Botswana, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Réunion, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia); in Latin America (Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama); in Europe (Finland, Norway and Sweden); and Asia (Malaysia).
The Supa Strikas model has shown considerable successes, leading to the creation of a number of other titles which use the same system. These include cricket comic Supa Tigers, which is distributed in India and Pakistan, and Strike Zone, a baseball comic based in Panama.
Music and recording industries
While radio and television stations are at least in theory strictly regulated by national governments, producers of printed or recorded works are not, leading marketers in some cases to attempt to get advertisers’ brands mentioned in lyrics of popular songs.
A recent popularity of product placement in music videos and actual song lyrics can be accredited to The Kluger Agency. Due to the repetitive nature of a popular song and its effects on pop culture as a whole, Product Placement or what the music industry calls “Brand Partnerships” are becoming a more effective way to create a trend practically overnight.
In January 2009, an album Migra Corridos with five songs including accordion ballad “El Mas Grande Enemigo” had received airplay on twenty-five Mexican radio stations. The tune purports to be the lament of a would-be immigrant left to die in the Arizona desert by coyotes (people smugglers). No disclosure was made to the radio stations that the U.S. Border Patrol had commissioned the compact disc with content devised by Elevación, a Hispanic advertising agency based in Washington, D.C. and New York City.
Payola and legal considerations
Much of the current body of broadcast law pertaining to the obligation of licensed broadcasters to disclose to audiences when they (or their staff) receive money or valuables in return for on-air promotion of a product dates to the payola scandals of 1950s broadcast radio.
An investigation launched in November 1959 into allegations that some radio disc jockeys had accepted bribes in return for radio airplay led to the indictment of disc jockey Alan Freed (of WABC and WINS) on May 9, 1960; he would be fined for accepting $2,500 to play certain songs, a violation of commercial bribery laws, and would ultimately lose his employment in commercial radio. On September 13, 1960, the U.S. government acted to ban payola in broadcasting. Under current U.S. law, Section 317 of the Communications Act states that “All matter broadcast by any radio station for which money, service, or other valuable consideration is directly or indirectly paid, or promised to or charged or accepted by, the station so broadcasting, from any person, shall, at the time the same is so broadcast, be announced as paid for or furnished, as the case may be, by such person. . .” with similar and related provisions reflected in Federal Communications Commission regulations as CFR 47, Section 73.1212.
While these provisions have been taken into legal consideration in subsequent payola investigations, including one 2005 investigation by New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer into Sony BMG and other major record companies, it is probable that a regulation requiring advertisements and advertisers to be clearly identified has far broader implications in many areas, including that of the use of product placement by advertisers in broadcast programming.
Often, a broadcaster will claim to have complied with the regulation by placing some form of acknowledgement of promotional consideration in an inconspicuous place in a broadcast – such as embedded within a portion of a programme’s closing credits. The question of whether adequate disclosure is being provided, however, remains open; the issue was raised in 2005 by FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, on the grounds that “some will tell you that if broadcasters and cable TV companies insist on further commercializing new and other shows alike, that is their business. But if they do so without disclosing it to the viewing public, that is payola, and that is the FCC’s business.” In 2008, the Federal Communications Commission gave notice of proposed rulemaking, in which it proposed to require more disclosure of product placement. According to Adelstein, “You shouldn’t need a magnifying glass to know who’s pitching you… A crawl at the end of the show shrunk down so small the human eye can’t read it isn’t really in the spirit of the law.”
Within the United Kingdom, product placement was banned until 2011. An EU directive would have allowed it, however culture secretary Andy Burnham refused to accept it, and for a time it appeared likely that the UK would introduce laws to fully outlaw it, whereas in the past it was only regulated by OFCOM. In September 2009 it was announced that the OFCOM ban would be lifted in an effort to raise funds for commercial broadcasters, but would remain in force in children’s TV and on the BBC. This news has been greeted with enthusiasm by British media companies like Independent Vision who are looking to further enhance the current business model for Advertiser Funded Programming.
Extreme and unusual examples
The film I, Robot, though set in the future, makes heavy use of product placements for Converse trainers, Ovaltine, Audi, FedEx, Dos Equis, and JVC among others, all of them introduced within the first ten minutes of the film. One particularly infamous scene borders into an actual advertisement in which a character compliments Will Smith’s character’s shoes to which he replies “Converse All-Stars, vintage 2004.” (the year of the film’s release). Audi invested the most on the film, going so far as to create a special car for the film, the Audi RSQ. It was expected that the placement would increase brand awareness and raise the emotional appeal of the Audi brand, objectives that were considered achieved when surveys conducted in the United States showed that the Audi RSQ gave a substantial boost to the image ratings of the brand. The Audi RSQ is seen during nine minutes of the film, although other Audis like the Audi A6, the Audi TT and the Audi A2 can be seen sprinkled throughout the film. I, Robot was ranked “the worst film for product placement” on a British site.
The film 17 Again makes heavy use of product placement featuring cereals, sandwich fillers, chips, stereo systems, and auto mobiles.
The film Demolition Man makes heavy mention of Taco Bell, which in the film’s setting is the only restaurant chain left in society. The film uses this to comic effect but never disparagingly.
The film The Island, directed by Michael Bay, features at least 35 individual products or brands, including cars, bottled water, shoes, credit cards, beer, ice cream, and even a search engine. The film was highly criticized for this. In the movie’s DVD Commentary track, Michael Bay claims he added the advertisements for realism purposes.
The film Casino Royale features peculiarly blatant product placement during a exchange between James Bond and Vesper Lynd in which she enquires seductively whether he wears a Rolex watch. “Omega,” he replies suavely. “Beautiful,” she purrs. It is not clear whether Omega, an official sponsor of the Bond franchise, had insisted on the line’s inclusion.
The comedy film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby also contained a high amount of product placement, as a parody of the large amount of sponsorship in the sport itself. Characters repeatedly mention brands under the disguise of NASCAR sponsorship. The movie contains possibly the first instance of an actual television commercial in a movie. It was intended to mock the controversy with NASCAR fans under the Unified Television Contract 2001-06 where they criticised the excessive number of commercial breaks during races.
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, a massive cinematic flop from 1987 prominently featured Pepsi in a scene where the titular characters steal a Pepsi delivery truck.
Bill Cosby’s film Leonard Part 6 was widely criticized for its Coca Cola product placements, as was The Wizard for Nintendo products.
The film Catch Me If You Can makes heavy handed use of a Sara Lee placement by mentioning it six times throughout the movie.
The 2001 film Evolution features product placement integral to the entire film. When mutated lifeforms attack earth, the characters use a large amount of Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoo as a source of selenium disulfide, which is poisonous to the creatures.
The 2001 film Josie and the Pussycats featured a large amount of blatant product placement for brands such as Puma, Target, McDonalds and TJ Maxx. This appears to be done ironically, as the plot of the film revolves around subliminal messages in advertising. The film’s general message can also be construed as an anti-consumerist one. The producers neither sought nor received compensation for featuring the brands in the film.
The Japanese animated series Code Geass is sponsored by the Japanese branch of Pizza Hut. Despite the fact that the series is set in an alternate reality, at least one main character is depicted ordering and receiving a Pizza Hut pizza on several occasions. The company’s logo also appears throughout the series.
The 1994 comedy North features Bruce Willis as a Federal Express truck driver in one of his numerous cameos in the film, dubbing FedEx “guardians of your most important packages and priority communiques”. In his highly negative review of the film, film critic Roger Ebert made special light of this scene.
The 2009 film Star Trek, in a scene where young James Kirk drives and crashes an old corvette, he operates a Nokia touch-screen smartphone. Before the car crashes, audiences will hear the Nokia trademark ring tone. The Finnish phone maker is even offering Star Trek applications.
The film The Cat in the Hat (2003) contained product placement where all residents of the town drive a Ford Focus.
Mac and Me blatantly promotes McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Skittles.
Self-criticism
The pilot episode of the NBC sitcom 30 Rock featured the General Electric (at the time an 80% owner of NBC) Trivection oven, which was viewed as product placement by some but said to be a joke by the show’s creator. The show has gone on to parody product placement.
The 1988 film Return of the Killer Tomatoes utilised the concept in a parodic manner—at one point, the film stops, as money to produce it ran out. The film’s producer (portrayed by George Clooney) steps in, suggesting product placement as a way to recoup the losses. This was followed by several scenes with blatant product placement, including a Pepsi billboard installed in front of the villain’s mansion.
The film Minority Report, makes heavy use of product placement, including Pepsi, Gap, and Lexus. Director Steven Spielberg also uses one scene to demonstrate the potential intrusion of one-to-one electronic advertising: the main character (Tom Cruise) is harassed by personalized advertisements calling out his own name.
The film Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, bit the hand that fed it by depicting acts of violence against most of the products that paid to be placed in the film. Examples include the scene where the Apple Store is broken into, the scene in which Brad Pitt and Edward Norton smash the headlights of a new Volkswagen Beetle, and trying to blow up a ‘popular coffee franchise’, a thinly veiled dig at Starbucks.
The film Superstar, starring Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon, shows every resident in town driving VW New Beetles. However, it is possible that this was done for comic effect. Similarly, the film Mr. Deeds shows the main character Adam Sandler purchasing a Chevrolet Corvette for every resident of his town.
The comedy film Kung Pow! Enter the Fist also attempted to spoof its product placements, clearly pointing out the anachronistic inclusion of a Taco Bell in the film. In a similar vein, in Looney Tunes: Back In Action the main characters stumble across a Wal-Mart while stranded in the middle of Death Valley and get all necessary supplies for their endorsement of the company. The television show Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens poked fun at its sponsor Sony in one episode, by having one character give another a Blu-Ray disc with the tagline “It’s a Sony”, only for them to complain that they do not have a Blu-ray player, to which the character responds by producing a copy in Betamax, again with the line “It’s a Sony”.
Faux product placement and parodies
For further information, see Fictional brands.
The 1992 film Wayne’s World included a parody in which both Wayne and Garth decry product placement while at the same time blatantly promoting many products by looking directly at the camera, holding up the product, smiling widely, and sometimes giving a thumbs-up.
The TV series X-Files (1993–2002) frequently featured the fictional Morley brand of cigarettes, the choice of the Cigarette Smoking Man. The company producing Morleys was also involved in a cover-up conspiracy in episode 18 of season seven, Brand X (Original Air Date—16 April 2000).
The 1984 film “Ghostbusters” had a Faux product in the climax of the film when the team faces the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
The 1998 film The Truman Show utilized the concept, although in a manner different than other films. The film’s premise, a 24-hour television broadcast called “The Truman Show” that focuses on the life of Truman Burbank, uses faux product placement. His wife places products in front of the hidden cameras, even naming certain products in dialogue with her husband, all of which increases Truman’s suspicion as he comes to realize his surroundings are intentionally fabricated.
Some filmmakers have responded to product placement by creating fictional products that frequently appear in the movies they make. Examples include:
- Kevin Smith – Nails Cigarettes, Mooby Corporation, Chewlees Gum, Discreeto Burritos
- Quentin Tarantino – Red Apple Cigarettes, Jack Rabbit Slim’s Restaurants, Big Kahuna Burger
- Robert Rodriguez – Chango Beer
- Pixar Animation Studios – Pizza Planet, Dinoco
- Warner Brothers – Acme Corporation
- Coen Brothers – Dapper Dan Hair Wax
- JJ Abrams – Slusho Drinks
- Spike Lee – Da Bomb malt liquor
This practice is also fairly common in certain comics, such as Svetlana Chmakova’s Dramacon, which makes several product-placement-esque usages of “Pawky”, (a modification of the name of the Japanese snack “Pocky”, popular among the anime and manga fan community in which the story is set) or Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon, which includes numerous references to the series Codename: Sailor V, which Sailor Moon was spun off of; the anime makes further use of this meta-referential gag, going so far as having an animator on a Codename: Sailor V feature film be a victim in one episode.
This practice is also common in certain “reality-based” video games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, which feature fictitious stores such as Ammu-Nation, Vinyl Countdown, Gash (spoofing Gap. Another spoof was made in GTA: San Andreas with Zip), Pizza Boy, etc.
Reverse placement
So-called “reverse product placement” takes “faux product placement” a step further, by creating products in real life to match those seen in a fictional setting. For example, in 2007, 7-Eleven rebranded 11 of its American stores and one Canadian store as “Kwik-E-Marts”, selling some real-life versions of products seen in episodes of the Simpsons such as Buzz Cola and Krusty-O’s cereal. In 1997, Acme Communications was created as a chain of real television stations; the firm is named for the fictional Acme Corporation of Warner Brothers fame.
In 1949, Crazy Eddie was created as a fictional car dealer in the film A Letter to Three Wives. That name, bestowed in 1971 upon a real-life electronics chain in New York City, appeared in 1984 as advertising placement in Splash; a 1989 parody, UHF, completed the circle by depicting a Crazy Ernie using a hard sell of “buy this car or I’ll club a seal” as a TV ad campaign.
In the 1984 cult film Repo Man, a reverse form of product placement is used, with an exaggerated form of 1980s era generic packaging used on products prominently shown on-screen (these include “Beer”, “Drink”, “Dry Gin” and “Food – Meat Flavored”).
Virtual placement
Virtual product placement uses computer graphics to insert the product into the program after the program is complete.
As of 2007, a new trend is emerging in product placement, the development of capabilities that permit dynamic or switchable product placement. Previously post production tools have permitted one time insertion of new product placement images and billboard advertising, notable in televised at baseball and hockey games. As of 2007, startups are offering or developing the ability to switch product placement. First generation virtual product placement has tended to be based upon sports arenas where the geometrical relationships of camera and the surface of the flat area onto which the billboard is projected, can be easily calculated. Second generation product placement or dynamic product placement is more focused upon commercial products. Third generation virtual or dynamic product placement allows targeting of customers with different products that can be dynamically switched based upon such factors as demographics, psychographics or behavioral information about the consumer.
Where game software has access to a user’s Internet connection, marketers gain the ability change displayed in-game advertisements on the fly. More controversially, in-game advertising vendors such as Microsoft-owned Massive Incorporated may use software to transmit user information to their servers, such as individual player ID’s and data about what was on the screen and for how long.
Also of interest are hypervideo techniques that can insert interactive elements into online video.
Viewer Response
This means of advertisement triggered an unusual viewer response in April 2009, when fans of the television series Chuck took advantage of product placement in the series by the restaurant chain Subway as part of a grassroots effort to save the show from cancellation. The movement gained support from several cast and crew members, with series star Zachary Levi leading hundreds of fans to a Subway restaurant in Birmingham, United Kingdom, and garnered significant attention in online media.
Product displacement
According to Danny Boyle, director of film Slumdog Millionaire (2008), the makers had to resort to something he calls “product displacement” when companies such as Mercedes-Benz refused to allow their products to be used in non-flattering settings. While they did not mind having a gangster driving their cars, they objected to their products been shown in a slum setting. This forced the makers in post-production to remove logos digitally, costing “tens of thousands of pounds”. Boyle did not, however, comment on the disproportionately common on-screen reference to the cigarette brand Marlboro Lights in the same film, leading some commentators to question whether there was significant funding from the said company for the film.
Similarly, in the film The Blues Brothers (1980), portions of the defunct Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois, were reconstructed in façade and used as the scene of an indoor car chase. Signage belonging to tenants of the mall when it was operational (1966–1978) was in some cases removed and replaced with that of other vendors; for instance, a Walgreens would become a Toys “Я” Us.
In Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and several other TV movies involving ill-fated long-distance train rides, all Amtrak logos were removed from the train.