Product Placement - Early Examples

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. Whether he was actually paid to do so, however, remains unknown. Product placement is still used in books to some extent, particularly in novels.

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

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.