Page 405 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Product Placement

a fact.” Product placement, then, is just one advertising practice that has been
long associated with film, and finds its place among other marketing strategies
such as tie-ins, cross-promotions, and product merchandising. Indeed, it is a
relatively new term for a practice that is almost as old as the medium of film it-
self. This has included payments by DeBeers to guarantee that diamonds would
be mentioned in scripts, to the use of costume drama to promote the fashion
industry.
Meanwhile, American television began as an advertising vehicle. The current
practice of “spot advertising,” in which multiple advertisers’ products are shilled
in commercial breaks during a program, was preceded by a system by which
each program had a single sponsor. Television stars were expected to sell their
program sponsor’s product in a variety of venues, including the program itself.
Thus, for instance, the early sitcom I Remember Mama would often end with
the narrator glowing about the beloved Mama’s insistence on making Maxwell
House coffee, and even Fred Flintstone anachronistically smoked Winston ciga-
rettes. However, with time, this practice waned somewhat, as television shows
became too expensive for any one advertiser to financially support alone, and it
is only in recent years that the practice is once more becoming prevalent, now
often with multiple placements per program.

ouT oF ThE CLosET

The founding of the Entertainment Resources & Marketing Association
(ERMA) in 1991 marked a moment of formalization of the industry, bringing
product placement, as the first president of the ERMA put it, “out of the closet.”
No longer was placement to be understood as a sporadic, almost experimental
practice. In film, particularly, the early use of Reece’s Pieces in E.T. proved to
be an enormous success, and when Dirty Harry used a 44 Magnum handgun,
it was one of the most memorable moments in the film and became a staple
of the sequels. Sales of Ray-Bans jumped when Tom Cruise wore them in Risky
Business. These early successes established the practice, and the ERMA now rep-
resents the interests of dozens of agencies dedicated to brokering deals between
advertisers and studios.

sTEaLTh PErsuasions
Product placement can be understood most simply as a form of “ad creep”:
a symptom of advertisers’ escalating need to reach consumers in largely unfet-
tered ways. The movies offer a wonderful environment for this: amazing sound
systems, comfy seats, very few distractions, and the kind of ticket prices that
would understandably make one reluctant to sully the experience with nega-
tive thoughts. The strange thing is we don’t actually notice brand appearances
in movies all that much, unless we’re been reminded to look out for them. On
the other hand, when we see an ad, it is clear to us that it has been designed
to persuade us to buy a product. For this reason, when we look at ads, we do