Product Placement and Hollywood

Sit through the first half hour of A History of Violence and a box of cereal - specifically "Honey Bunches of Oats" - will appear numerous times. By the fourth viewing, your mouth is watering and you want to jump from your seat, run to the nearest grocery store and purchase a box to munch on. This is exactly what branding or product placement specialists desire; the American movie going public to purchase those items/brands they see on the big screen.

The cost of making a feature film, television film or television series has skyrocketed and Hollywood is in search of ways to offset those costs. Enter the brand marketing/product placement specialist whose job is to broker a lucrative deal between a well known (or even not so well known) brand with a studio or production company. Companies such as Pepsi, Kellogg's, and General Motors will pay high fees to insure that their products are visible. Just look at what happened when Pontiac introduced their new car, the Solstice, on The Apprentice last season on NBC - they sold their entire first year production on the car within a four hour period. Clearly brand integration (branding a product through vehicles such as books, television, film, video game) works.

Take the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie blockbuster Mr. and Mrs. Smith in which over twenty brands including Cadillac, Everlast, Nokia, Oakley, Samsung were heavily featured. The filmmakers even went so far as to have a Sub-Zero brand refrigerator stop bullets from Jolie's gun (meant to hit her assassin hubby Pitt). Grossing well over $50 million US, the brands highlighted in Smith were seen by persons all over the world - who wouldn't want the same Mercedes as seen in the film?

The comic based film The Fantastic Four entered into numerous tie-in agreements with companies such as Burger King, Amazon.com, and Samsung. Samsung showcased some ninety products in the film including plasma screen televisions and refrigerators. In a supporting radio, print and online campaign, The Thing (Michael Chiklis) made the following statement "Samsung: Fantastic". Burger King ran a family oriented Fantastic Four promotion where adults received a Fantastic Four/Amazon.com cash card with every value meal (each worth $1.) and kids received action figures in their kids meal.

NASCAR saw Lindsay Lohan's film Herbie: Fully Loaded as a great promotional vehicle for its racing league and executed an agreement to have NASCAR race cars, driver's and sponsors prominently displayed throughout the film. Phone Company and NASCAR sponsor Nextel signed on and offered "Herbie" ringtones, showed "Herbie" trailers at all Nextel sponsored NASCAR races and aired TV spots that prominently featured the film. Nextel saw the relationship with the Disney family as a clear way to increase visibility of its brand. UPS, the shipping company of NASCAR, signed on for its first ever film tie-in. The UPS car was outfitted with a specific "Herbie" paint job.

In the recent comedy hit The 40 Year Old Virgin much of the action takes place in an electronics store which gave brands such as Apple and Sony loads of airtime. Interestingly the film also gives a cameo to EBay when one of its characters (Catherine Keener) owns a storefront EBay reseller. Magnum condoms appear throughout the film - a perfect product placement if ever there was one (hey folks remember safe sex after the film).

Controversy arose over the consistent placement of Budweiser beer in the film The Wedding Crashers. Although the film had an R rating it drew a large teenage audience who were exposed over and over again to the drinking of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Of course alcohol brands are consistently displayed in films - in the summer hit The Dukes of Hazzard well known liquors such as Beefeater, Busch, Dos Equis and others were served time and again by Jessica Simpson in her Daisy Duke shorts.

Films marked to children are not immune to the cross branding phenomenon. In the DreamWorks animated film Madagascar, the gamut of brands featured included Circuit City, Coca-Cola, HP, Swatch and Ziploc. There is even a scene where a Burger King flame grilled billboard is lit on fire (Burger King placed Madagascar toys in its kids' meals). Reverse branding also occurs in kiddie flicks. In the Johnny Depp remake Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wonka candy bars are a main character. Nestle took the opportunity to make this fictional candy into a reality when it released its line of Wonka candies to the consumer.

In September 2005, CBS made branding history when it announced that it would embed the Chevrolet Impala logo in five of its prime time shows during fall premiere week. Those shows included hits such as CSI and Yes Dear. Viewers who spotted the logo were led to CBS.com where they could enter a contest to win the car. NBC followed suit when it announced that General Motors would pay up to $2 million per episode to have its products embedded in the new The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. According to media research firm PQ Media, spending on product placement in television is expected to grow over thirty percent by end of 2005.

Regulators, including the FTC, have recently made clear that product placement will be reviewed and subject to federal law. When Commercial Alert, an Oregon based watchdog organization, petitioned the FTC to clearly label products as they appeared on television shows the FTC rejected the request. This has led most industry insiders to believe that the federal government will use a hand off approach to this form of advertising.

Product placement in film and television is clearly the wave of the future. However industry executives must walk a fine line between product placements (where a product is show in a scene) versus actual sales (where an actor states "wow this Bud is great!"). If viewers are forced to watch a film or series where they are hit over the head with brands, you can bet lots of television sets will be turned off and movie theaters left empty.