The Booming World of 'Product Placement'

Published on: December 22, 2004

Remember the Horizon milk carton in "Jerry Maguire"? How about those boxes of cereal that were prominently positioned in almost every "Seinfeld" episode? And how long did it take you to figure out that the episode of "The Apprentice" that centered on a new design for a Pepsi flavor would soon morph into a TV spot?

Welcome to the world of ever more pumped-up product placement.

In an era when TV commercials can be clicked off by the hand that rocks the remote control, advertisers are busily expanding their marketing mix to include a plethora of product placements.

And big money is changing hands.

According to Nielsen Media Research, the total dollars spent on these product placement deals in 2003 topped $360 million. Companies such as Ford, Coca-Cola, AT&T Wireless and others are very happy to shell out more than $25 million EACH for the right to place their products in strategic ways on television and films (and even in books and music).

Placing products in films is hardly new. John Huston allowed Gordon's Gin to "place" its iconic bottles in the hands of the teetotaler character Katharine Hepburn played in 1951's "The African Queen." Not that any of the gin passed her lips — she tossed the bottles overboard to show her seriousness about not tippling on the rocky boat trip she was about to take with Humphrey Bogart’s hard-drinking character.

Sometimes, of course, the specificity of a brand name contributes to the believability of the film, book or TV show. Would the film "You've Got Mail" be the same without AOL on the main characters' computers? And what would "Men in Black II" be without Ray-Ban sunglasses and Burger King?

Not that all placement is so straightforward; sometimes it's backhanded, satirical, or downright funny, such as the sign for Farbucks in "Shrek II."

For years, product placement in film and television has been a subtle way to tout to everything from household products to alcohol to airlines, and anything else a clever marketing person could get on the set and into the minds of viewers. For a while, it was a gentle win-win situation: Movie and television producers picked up a little extra cash (often under the table), and marketers got a few seconds' exposure for their client at considerably less cost than traditional advertising (with continuing exposure in reruns).

Nowadays, corporations dedicated solely to this new venue for advertising scout out opportunities for both product placement and "product integration" (the use of a product as part of the plot line, such as Revlon cosmetics on the daytime soap opera "All My Children" or Pepsi in "The Apprentice"). Some shows even combine product placements with straight advertising spots.

The bottom line for all this product-placement fever is for brands to find a way to cover the loss of viewers who skip commercials with their remote controls or, more ominously for advertisers, through new technologies such as TiVO.

The importance of television product placement got a big nod in September 2003, when A.C. Nielsen first started tracking the popularity of product placement on prime-time television. Pollsters watch tapes of shows, note each time they see a commercial product and the amount of time the image appears. Beginning in February 2004, Nielsen began to sell this data to network and advertising clients as a new way to gauge the prospective audience for companies’ promotional dollars.

So what does this mean for the consumer? As ever, we need to be on our toes to make sure we understand why certain products are receiving attention in a TV show or movie. Chances are that it is not because the actor (or reality show contestant) actually likes the brand; rather, that the show's producer has been paid lots of money to put it in his or hands.

(Just in case you were wondering, no companies paid to have their products mentioned in this article.)

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