Product placement

Product placement (PPL) is a promotional tactic used by marketers in which a real commercial product is used in fictional or non-fictional media, and the presence of the product is a result of an economic exchange. When featuring a product is not part of an economic exchange, it is called a product plug. Product placement appears in plays, film, television series, music videos, video-games and books, and is a relatively new idea (first appearing in the 1980's). Product placement occurs with the inclusion of a brand's logo, or a favorable mention or appearance of a product. This is done without disclosure, and under the premise that it is a natural part of the work. Most major movie releases today contain product placements. The most common form is movie and television placements and more recently video games (see advergaming).

Manifestations of product placement

Early examples

Traditionally, television networks demanded brand names be "greeked", like changing a Nokia phone to "Nokio" on the t.v. show Melrose Place. In 1982, the best-known instance of product placement appeared in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which increased sales of Reese's Pieces 65 percent.

Most of the motorcycles used in the 1979 film Mad Max were allegedly donated to the production by Kawasaki.

A very early example of product placement in film occurs in the 1949 film Love Happy, in which Harpo Marx cavorts on a rooftop among various billboards and at one point escapes from the villains on the old Mobil logo, the "Flying Red Horse".

Likely the earliest example of product placement in a videogame occurs in the 1991 videogame James Pond 2.

Likely the earliest example of product placement in a cartoon occurs in the Comedy Central show: Shorties Watchin’ Shorties.^*

Forms of product placement

The most basic form of product placement is the inclusion of a product name or logo in the foreground or background of a scene. Payments are based on exposure, including the number of times the product is shown or mentioned, the duration of that exposure, and the degree of inclusion of the product in the story line. If the product is actively used (such as when a leading character can be clearly seen to take a drink from the bottle or can), placement fees may be higher.

Other times, 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.

The most common products to be promoted in this way are automobiles. Frequently, all the important vehicles in a movie or television serial will be supplied by one manufacturer. For example, The X-Files used Fords, as do leading characters on 24. The James Bond films were pioneers of such placement: the 1974 film The Man with the Golden Gun featured 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. Other times, vehicles or other products take on such key roles in the film it is as if they are another character. Examples of this practice include the placement of Audi in I, Robot and The Transporter 2 or the Nokia phone in Cellular, as well as the highway scene in The Matrix Reloaded and Bad Boys 2, in which every car was made by General Motors.

More recently, Apple Computer frequently places its products in films and on television, where they therefore seem much more common than in most real-world offices and homes. Apple has recently stated that it does not pay for product placement, though executives will not say how their products get into movies and onto TV. 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 similar position in the Swedish furniture retailer's promotional materials several years ago.

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.

Product placement is also used in books (particularly novels) and video games, such as Crazy Taxi which featured numerous 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.

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 onscreen 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.

Product placement companies work to ensure that their clients' products receive maximum screen time and exposure - whether it be the Nokia phone that Agent Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) uses on Alias, the Lacoste polo shirt that Alex Hitchens (Will Smith) wears in the feature film Hitch or the Rimowa pilot case Gil Grissom (William L. Petersen) carries as he arrives at crime scenes on _Crime_Scene_Investigation.

Product placement can be seen as a modern version of the exhibit displays seen at world's fairs, concerts, sporting events, or anywhere that large numbers of potential customers gathered.

Virtual product placement uses computer graphics to insert the product into the program after the program is complete^*^*.

The film The Truman Show explores the idea of a 24-hour on-air reality television program funded entirely by product placement.

Controversy

The James Bond film Licence to Kill 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 picture 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.

Some such as Commercial Alert, believe product placement is "an affront to basic honesty"^* which is too pervasive in today's society. Commercial Alert asks for full disclosure of all product placement arrangements. They feel that most product placements are deceptive and are not fully or clearly disclosed, advocating notification of embedded advertisements before and during a television program. One justification for this is that it allows greater parental control for children, who are said to be influenced greatly by product placement.

The film Minority Report, loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story of the same name, makes heavy use of product placement including Coca-Cola, Nokia, Gap and Lexus. Director Steven Spielberg also uses one scene to apparently criticize advertising: the main character (Tom Cruise) is harassed by personalised advertisements calling out his own name. The movie Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, bites the hands that feed 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, and the scene in which Brad Pitt and Edward Norton smash the headlights of a new Volkswagen Beetle. However it is arguable that the negative portrayal of these ads is cancelled out since they are in fact still paid-for product placements within the film.

Spoofs

The concept of product placement has been spoofed many times. Notable examples include:

Douglas Coupland's second novel, Shampoo Planet, satirizes product placement by mentioning invented brand names (including their trademark symbols) for a wide variety of products throughout the text.
David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest, set in the near future, years are not known by numbers but by a brand name such as "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment". This is known as "Subsidized time".
The movie Wayne's World has a scene where Wayne and Garth spoof common commercials of the early '90s in the actual film in a way that parodies the way that corporate sponsorship affects television programs (the context of the scene is that they don't want a local arcade to sponsor their public-access cable show). This scene, due to its blatant use of different products (Pizza Hut, Pepsi, Nuprin), is commonly edited out of rebroadcasts of the film. The film also includes a faux product placement in the form of the local hangout called Stan Makita's. This is a spoof of the popular Canadian coffee chain called Tim Hortons. Makita and Horton were both 1960's hockey stars.
Brett Easton Ellis's book American Psycho satirizes on the usage of product placement throug being product-laden itself.
In the movie Josie and the Pussycats an inordinate degree of product placement constitutes a running joke. Almost every scene features a mention or appearance of one or more famous brands, including the likes of Motorola, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Evian, Cartoon Network, and more. None of the advertisements were paid promotions by the represented brands; rather, they were inserted voluntarily by the filmmakers as a plot point.
The interactive fiction game Coke Is It! consists of excerpts from classic text adventure games (such as Adventure) with humorously exaggerated product placement by The Coca-Cola Company.
The film, The Coca-Cola Kid is not a product placement and it states it on its very cover ^*.
Paul Simon's song, "Kodachrome" is also not a product placement.
A product non-placement spoof was done in the film Repo Man, in which cans of beer would be labeled simply "BEER", and food containers would be labeled "FOOD", in the style used for generic brands in the 1980's.
In the popular video game Vice City, various parasols can be seen on beaches, simply branded with "DRINK BEER".
In Shrek 2, Shark Tale and Over the Hedge, there are product parodies such as Farbucks Coffee in Shrek 2, Coral Cola in Shark Tale and Spuddies (Pringles) in Over the Hedge.
In one chapter of the comic Runaways, three characters go out for sushi in a restaurant that examination of one panel in particular reveals is called "Sushibucks", a play on the brand name Starbucks; the use of a "greeked" name in that chapter is somewhat ironic given that an earlier volume of the same comic includes a non-greeked mention in dialogue of In-N-Out, a real restaurant chain, when one character complains of hunger. In both cases, the restaurant name was part of a joke or gag.
An episode of the anime Yu Yu Hakusho features a sight gag in the background of one scene in which an abandoned tire is labeled "BADYEAR", a playful greeking of Goodyear's brand name.

Faux Product Placement

Some filmmakers have responded to product placement by creating false products that frequently appear in the movies they make. Some examples:

Kevin Smith - Nails Cigarettes, Mooby Corporation, Chewlees Gum, Discreeto Burritos
Quentin Tarantino - Red Apple Cigarettes, Big Kahuna Burger, Jack Rabbit Slim's Restaurants.
Robert Rodriguez - Chango Beer.

This practice is also fairly common in certain comics, such as Svetlana Chmakova's Dramacon (which makes several product-placement-esque usages "Pawky", a greeking of the name of the Japanese sweet "Pocky", a popular import amongst the anime and manga fan community amongst whom the story is set), or Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon (which includes numerous references to the series Sailor V which Moon was spun off of; the anime makes even further usage of this meta-referential gag, going so far as having an animator on a Sailor V feature film be the victim of the week in one episode).

External links

Handbook of Product Placement in the Mass Media: New Strategies in Marketing Theory, Practice, Trends, and Ethics - the only serious English-language book covering product placement, with contributions by scholars, researchers and practitioners (edited by Mary-Lou Galician and published by Haworth Press)
iTVX Glossary of Product Placement Terms
Commercial Alert
brandcameo – a website counting product placement and brand appearances in films, published by brandchannel.
Brand Hype – a website dedicated to exploring product placement from a critical perspective. Includes a growing database of movies and placements, including sequence, nature, duration.
Seesaw Media Ltd - The UK's leading television and feature film product placement and promotions agency.

References

Solomon. Zaichkowsky, Polegato.Consumer Behaviour Pearson, Toronto. 2005

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