Product Placement on TV - how future audiences will be served up to advertisers
If the purpose of a TV programme is to herd consumers in the direction of the advertisers, then the traditional commercial break, when audiences stop paying attention to the TV set and go off for a coffee/cigarette/toilet break or take the opportunity to switch channel, does not always do its job. TiVOs and VCRs further threaten any kind of commercial which interrupts the programming.
Advertisers have responded to this by expanding the ways in which the consumer is exposed to the product. Advertisers make a deal with the creators of a movie or TV show and provide them with examples of their product (cars, computers, canned drinks) to be used on set. The product will feature in the film or show, will get associated with the values of that show (hip? award-winning?) and any celebrity who appears on the show using it. The advertisers might want to tie in their product placement with a deal which means they get to promote the movie (eg with a special sort of Happy Meal) in return for the movie promoting them. Often they pay huge amounts of money for the privilege of placing a product.
The first instance of modern product placement, where a company negotiated to have its product feature as a major part of a story, is ET, where Reese's Pieces were the food of choice for the cuddly alien. M&Ms turned the offer down. Sales of Reese's Pieces went up astronomically.
Read More About Product Placement
- Life As A Product Placement - from CNN Money
- A Product Placement Hall of Fame - Business Week
- How Product Placement Works - from HowStuffWorks
- Product Placement Hits The Small Screen - from Fox News
- Starring Apple - how Apple computers approaches the issue
- Coming Soon to a Theatre Near you: The Moviemercial - NY Times
- Product Advertisers Find Sopranos Hard To Resist - from Variety
