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Branded entertainment: product placement in the entertainment business

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Origins of and reasons for product placement: history of product placement in the cinema, sponsored shows. Factors that can influence the cost of a placement. Branded entertainment in all its forms: series and television programs, novels and plays.
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Branded entertainment: product placement in the entertainment business

Introduction

The expression `product placement', or `brand placement', essentially describes the location or, more accurately, the integration of a product or a brand into a film or televised series. It is also possible, however, to find com-mercial insertions within other cultural vehicles, such as songs or novels. In the visual arts and entertainment world, these brand or product placements are grouped under the banner of `branded entertainment'.

For some, seeing brands everywhere is a source of irritation. Other people derive amusement from spotting them. There are those who blank them out as little more than part of the consumer backdrop of life. Love them or hate them, product placements are nonetheless increasingly a part of our daily lives. In future, they will be the principal piece of a progressively more sophisticated communication strategy on the marketing chessboard that is `branded entertainment' - or, quite literally, entertainment by or in con-junction with a brand. This is a world in which a brand is able to get closer to its target audience via a film, a television programme or series, a play, a novel, song, or show, indeed even a video game, using lines of communication quite different from those employed to date by the three main families of above the line, below the line and internet marketing. Hence the broader concept of `entertainment marketing', sometimes used to describe the experiential consumption stemming from these many and varied brand and product placements.

Branded entertainment is an Anglo-Saxon term, but it does not follow that the method is the exclusive province of US marketers. It is certainly true that the United States was the cradle of its early development. For this reason, many examples from the United States will be used to illustrate the pages that follow, in order to fully understand the lead that this country has over others in this area, and the lessons that can be learnt from it.

Brand management and communication are evolving at lightning speed. Product placement in the cinema is still often only associated with the adventures of James Bond. The directors of these films are even criticized for their apparent subservience to the despicable merchants of the Temple. And yet is it not logical to suppose that if this refined and distinguished character chose to drink champagne, it might as well be Bollinger? That if he chose to drive, he might as well drive an Aston Martin Vanquish? That if he wore shoes, they might as well be Church? That if he travelled, he might as well carry a Samsonite suitcase? That if he drank vodka, it might as well be called Smirnoff or Finlandia? That if he looked at his watch, it might as well be a Rolex, or perhaps an Omega? However unique he may be, perhaps even that remarkable character James Bond needs brands, to recreate a link to reality. We shall, however, be analysing many other examples beyond the case of 007: despite being so often cited, the British secret agent is not always the most representative example.

All alert marketers are now on deck, trying to make out as best and as quickly as they can the contours of this new shoreline. Variety magazine recently compared product placement to cocaine for television networks, the infatuation is so strong. But as soon as the demand to seize all available opportunities becomes urgent, prices rise rapidly and steeply. Yes, the possible media become more numerous and diverse every day. Nonetheless, the `good' platforms for the development of a pertinent and performing branded entertainment policy are not exactly legion. Despite the very high prices, in 2005, for the successful series Desperate Housewives, the three or four supplemental product placement opportunities available saw applications from 250 potential advertisers. What yesterday was a simple agreement, even just an ordinary handshake, today appears increasingly as a complex communication process that must be established, if a precise goal is to be attained.

1. Origins of and reasons for product placement

1.1 History of product placement in the cinema

cinema show television program

When marketers study the origins of product placement, they generally think of the pioneering, often hesitant applications that were to be found in cinema more than a hundred years ago. Yet a more meticulous study of the history of communication quickly makes plain that well before the cinema, cabaret and actors of all genres used product placement for brands that also used them occasionally as advertising spokespersons. To cite only one famous example, before ever a camera had been cranked into action, Sarah Bernhardt appeared on stage wearing La Diaphane powder. Any reader who is a lover of impressionism will perhaps recall a famous motion picture by Йdouard Manet, titled Bar at the Folies-Bergиre in 1881. Passing over the placement of the brand name of the establishment in the title of the work, many people will undoubtedly have noticed the presence of numerous bottles on either side of the bar. On each side of the picture is a beer bottle, which, although shown in profile, bears a label whose shape and characteristic red triangle allow it to be identified as Bass beer [1, p. 74]. It is useless for us to wonder whether the painter had found an extra source of income, or whether he simply aspired to a consummate realism, for which he is still credited today. In order to exist, a brand must be known: not necessarily by everyone, but in every event by those who are likely to buy its products. For this to occur, it must be placed in all the strategic locations that will enable it to connect with this potential audience. Owing to the mania that it soon stirred up, the cinema was quickly perceived as a vector of huge potential, and one to be prioritized.

A famous marketer Jay Newell's research showes that certain films made by Auguste and Louis Lumiиre in 1896, at the request of Franзois-Henri Lavanchy-Clarke, representative of Lever Brothers in France, represent the first cases of product placement on record. Others see these films as merely the first steps into advertising films [1, p. 149].

The studios understood very early the advantages that could be gained from associating with brands. From the beginning of the 1910s, the famous Model T Fords were frequently found in the credits of Mack Sennett comedies [2, p. 34]. At the beginning, it was not necessarily a matter of placement of the brand's name, but of its products. This was for the simple and very good reason that it was not about making the advertisers pay, but above all benefiting from accessories, vehicles, services for free, the quid pro quo being that they are allowed to appear onscreen. In his autobiography, the director Robert Parrish tells of the choice of automobile brands dictated by the producer because of a contract with a car maker.

The famous historian Kerry Segrave recounts how at the same time, brands made short ads, generally only one reel long, dedicated to their products, in order to offer them to cinema operators under advantageous conditions. In 1931, Variety observed that more than 50 per cent of cinemas showed advertising programmes. At the dawn of the talkies, towards the end of the 1920s, the phenomenon was so remarkable that the cinema had become the place of entertainment. The brands even organized factual communications operations in cinema lobbies. However, advertising films, as well as the commercial direction of cinemas, eventually succumbed to their opponents. In contrast, placement in films resisted opposition and evolved. Cinema is a captive medium for its audience and therefore particularly interesting to advertisers.

The whole history of cinema is marked by representative examples. In 1916, the Universal studio produced a silent film with the explicit title, She Wanted a Ford. In 1929, Alfred Hitchcock subtly used a luminous sign for Gordon's gin, in order to dramatize the dark thoughts of the murderess Alice White, played by Anny Ondra in Blackmail [3, p. 132].

The interpretative and evocative power of the cinema also allows it to take a great many creative liberties. Although she had never smoked a cigarette in her entire life as a comic character, in Superman II (Richard Lester, 1980) the character of Lois Lane conspicuously smokes Marlboros. The brand admitted to having paid the sum of US$42,000 for 22 placements throughout the film. In one of the film's fight scenes, Superman was even thrown into the side of a truck in the brand's colours, situated in mid-screen. Bearing in mind the target audience for this film, the association with the heroic world of Superman was very important for the advertiser in order to relegitimate the consumption of its product [3, p. 112].

All of these examples illustrate how placements have always been present in films, but for reasons that are sometimes very different, as we will examine. They confirm, in fact, that there is no one placement, but multiple possibilities for stage direction, satisfying different objectives.

1.2 Sponsored shows

Marketing an...

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