Consumer marketers are giving the four P’s a workout lately. Product placements are making big news and raising bigger questions as companies like Home Depot, Coca-Cola and even Caterpillar are pushing the bounds of promotion to boost more than product sales.
My first experience with product placement came while working for the Iams Company’s then PR agency. Iams had provided some free bags of pet food to a product placement company. The food was included in an episode of Northern Exposure. In return, Iams got a bill for $4K and some glossy 8x10’s of a scene in the Northern Exposure general store. You can see the product in the background.
Branded Entertainment
The pet food example raises the biggest question? How do you measure the effectiveness of this tactic, especially as the placements get more creative and unconventional?
Product placements are pushing the envelope to try and escape TiVo. Just look at the Apprentice. Last week, Home Depot hitched their wagon to The Donald. It was interesting to see how Home Depot supported the appearance. They ran an ad during the show promoting their in-store Apprentice “How-To” classes. The combination gets Home Depot more buzz, brings customers into their stores and offers an approach to measuring the success of the placement.
Evidently most consumers do not mind product placement, depending on how it is done. But it is still a questionable approach to creating awareness. According to Ad Age (registration required), network executives are getting savvy to this new generation of product placement, calling it product integration or branded entertainment. This is in part so they can charge more for it, but it is also in response to the increase in marketers looking for new ways to put products into programs.
The Dark Side of Product Placement
Product placement started in the 1930s. Since then it has been done, redone and overdone. Remember The Restaurant? American Express was sponsoring the "unscripted drama" and seemingly every other scene included a gratuitous product placement—from a contrived reference by someone on the show to a lingering camera shot of an Amex card. Product placement is one of the reason’s the show was panned. (Emphasis on one of the reasons, but I digress.)
Since then, the media bring us an array of examples with an equally diverse level of effectiveness. Burger King recently took an irreverent approach, mocking themselves on an episode of Arrested Development. And Survivor has deals in place with several advertisers, getting Ad Freak to ponder about alternative uses for products from GM, Home Depot and P&G.
Product placement is on the rise, but so is scrutiny for this tactic. If you decide to investigate product placement, I would offer the following advice. Do it big and do it right, but make it measurable and most of all—be careful.
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