Product Placements in Movies & Music Videos; Why and How to Approach this as a Brand and Marketing Professional

We can’t start to talk about product placements in movies and music videos from a marketing professional’s standpoint without first touching on some history of motion pictures and by extension Television for better understanding.

Motion picture (film) as you will have it, has been in existence since the later years of the 18th century for entertainment purposes, marred by limited access and audience. Not until 1920s, about 30 years later will you find the first set of noticeable product placements in cinema motion pictures with the likes of "The Garage" with the logo of Red Crown Gasoline featured multiple times.

There is no detail or information to corroborate if this was paid for or not. However, my theory would be, due to non-existence of audio in films at the time, a noted gasoline brand would have been required to describe what it was in the comedy cinemas when it needed to be depicted.

Within the same decade, the Television was invented, audio was synched in films and visual broadcast with sound was also born, making it the next best thing after radio as a primary source of information, entertainment and information validation (hold on to the information validation highlighted) post WW2 signify the end of the Golden Age of Radio

Fast Forward to the late 1950s to the 1960s with proliferation of home television sets granting access to multiple households making it an important connection point to reach a wider audience. Lets not forget the exponential growth of film studios, movie and TV shows budget shooting high.

Recall TV took the path from radio which was a primary source of information validation, I am sure till this very day, if you hear a time check on radio and your wrist watch tells a different time, you will doubt the genuineness of the timepiece time for a slight second at the least.?

Television and movies quickly became a go to channel for consumers for new information, trending products/services across industries and also for validation. Richard Nixon quotes “American People Don’t Believe Anything Until They See it on Television”.

As the main target of every advertising content is to show functional benefits of product/service or appeal to the emotional receptors of the consumer to trigger an emotional connection or a response, product placements are not particularly any different depending on your desired goal, or where on the product lifecycle your products sits.

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However, let us not forget, one of our main goals is to classically condition our consumer to associate our product and brands to the desired emotional connection to us (Consumer behavior in marketing 101).

In the 80s The Hershey Company for Reese’s pieces closed a blockbuster deal with E.T The Extra -Terrestrial movie as the candy of choice and cross promotion advertising. Reese’s doubled its sales within 2 weeks of the film release. The film with its performance shed the spotlight to a relatively? new product recently introduced to the US and Canadian market (talking about where in the product lifecycle your product sits).

You certainly can’t talk about product placements without my all time best to do it movie series “James Bond”. In my opinion, the franchise has been one of the best to do it over and over, placing products at the heart of the story and action.?

Sean Connery’s swagger and finesse? (Goldfinger 1964 and Thunderball 1965) with the Aston Martin DB5 representing all the imaginative possibilities of British engineering at the time Aston Martin struggled with sales to competing sports car brands at home taking Aston Martin back to the world and stage. The DB5 tough limited edition quickly became an iconic classic collectable car.

Though we know, Aston Martin DB5 will not exactly launch machine guns from the front grill, or deploy a smoke bomb from the rear or shoot out spikes from the tyre spokes, it raised curiosity of how far British car engineering could go. As for emotional triggers, sitting in an Aston Martin potentially gets you closer to feeling like James Bond himself and a relatable superhero (classical Conditioning).

It is also worthy of mentioning, in the over 60 years of the most popular British spy movie, 25+ of it has been in partnership with Omega watches. This has covered all the watches embedded in the story and action lines to promote the Omega Seamaster range. Which character best fits better than a former Royal Navy? turned spy on a road to becoming great.

Finally, If you as a marketeer will be considering brand placements in the next movies in the future, you will need to consider these key things

1. Are you planning a product placement because you need one or there is a movie that has been proposed to you seen to fit your brand/product? This is a question you need to ask yourself, evaluating if you really need them. Seek out pre-planned productions putting your best foot forward (production company, cast, storyline and budget).
2. Be sure to work with where your product is, in the product lifecycle. This will help guide how your product is to be infused/integrated in the movie as opposed to just placing the product in the frame - I have a grudge against showing a product in the frame/scene without interaction or giving takeaways/interaction from the scenes. Never forget, the impression your product is meant to leave after the scene(s) is the best value you’re going to get.
3. A placement/Integration cannot be complete without tie-ins and co-promotions having your brand carried along with movie promos, when it is possible, limited edition products can be considered.
4. Your product integration/placement in the story is only the beginning. You would have given yourself a spring board if you choose to go the route of product integration to the whole universe of exploration through talent partnership of key talents in your scenes. It will be worth extending the storyline created in the movie for your product/brand to something from your own POV and an entire TVC campaign emerging from it - see Daniel Craig vs James Bond ( Heinken advert).

You may have noticed I have included the word integration with placements, for the record, I will rather stick to the term product integration than placement to set the required frame of mind.

Subsequent article will shed light on "sonic Signatures" as a brand asset.