Product Placement - Product Placement in Movies

Product Placement in Movies

Product placement is an investment for brands trying to reach a niche audience, and there are strong reasons for investors to expect that film product placement will increase consumer awareness of a particular brand. A big-budget feature film that has expectations of grossing millions may attract many commercial interests; however, the film studio must also analyze if a product fits with the image of the film. A high-profile star may draw more attention to a product, and therefore, in many cases, this becomes a separate point of negotiation within his or her contract.

Among the famous silent films to feature product placement was Wings (1927), the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It contained a plug for Hershey's chocolate.

Fritz Lang's film M (released in 1931) includes features a prominent banner display on a staircase in one scene for Wrigley's PK Chewing Gum, which is right in the viewer's eye for approximately 20–30 seconds.

Another early example in film occurs in Horse Feathers (1932), wherein Thelma Todd's character falls out of a canoe and into a river. She calls for a life saver and Groucho Marx's character tosses her a Life Savers candy.

The film It's a Wonderful Life (1946), directed by Frank Capra, depicts a young boy with aspirations to be an explorer, displaying a prominent copy of National Geographic.

In the film Love Happy (1949), Harpo Marx's character cavorts on a rooftop among various billboards and at one point escapes from the villains on the old Mobil logo, the "Flying Red Horse". Harrison's Reports severely criticized this scene in its film review and in a front-page editorial of the same issue.

In the film noir Gun Crazy (1949), the climactic crime is the payroll robbery of the Armour meat-packing plant, where a Bulova clock is prominently seen.

In other early media, e.g., radio in the 1930s and 1940s and early television in the 1950s, television programs were often underwritten by companies. "Soap operas" are called such because they were initially underwritten by consumer, packaged-goods companies such as Procter & Gamble or Unilever. When television began to displace radio, DuMont's Cavalcade of Stars television show was, in its era, notable for not relying on a sole sponsor in the tradition of NBC's Texaco Star Theater and similar productions. Sponsorship exists today with programs being sponsored by major vendors such as Hallmark Cards.

The conspicuous display of Studebaker motor vehicles in the television series Mr. Ed (1961–1966), which was sponsored by the Studebaker Corporation from 1961 to 1963, as well as the display of Ford vehicles on the series Hazel (1961–1966), which was sponsored by the Ford Motor Company from 1961 to 1965, are also notable examples of product placement.

Incorporation of products into the actual plot of a film or television show is generally called "brand integration". An early example of such brand integration was by Abercrombie & Fitch, when one of its stores provided the notional venue for part of the romantic comedy film Man's Favorite Sport? (1964) starring Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss.

The 1995 film GoldenEye was the focus of a highly successful BMW campaign, devised by product placement specialist Karen Sortito, which promoted the automaker's new Z3 model. Sales of the Z3 surged as film claimed the top spot at the box office. For the next film in the James Bond franchise, Tomorrow Never Dies, Sortito created a $100 million promotional campaign that included tie-ins with BMW, Visa, L'Oréal, Ericsson, Heineken, Avis, and Omega SA. The film brought in more than $300 million dollars.

With the 2002 film Die Another Day, Smirnoff withdrew from its long association with James Bond, which started with Sean Connery in the 1962 film Dr No. The drinks company wanted to pursue a younger age-group than that deemed to be that which followed Bond films. As a result, Finlandia Vodka became the brand used in the Pierce Brosnan film. As Ford had supplied models of their cars for the 2004 film Thunderbirds, their logo on the cars appears many times in the film, even up close.

A recent example is HBO's Sex and the City (1998–2004), where the plot revolved around, among other things, Absolut Vodka, a campaign upon which one of the protagonists was working, and a billboard in Times Square, where a bottle prevented an image of the model from being pornographic. Knight Rider (1982–1986), a television series featuring a talking Pontiac Trans Am, is another example of brand integration.