Placement, People!

Continued from page 1

By Henry Jenkins

September 6, 2002

Meanwhile, Hollywood discovered that there was real money to be made selling product placements in feature films. Many film buffs know that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was a significant launching pad for the then-new Reese's Pieces and that the cute alien's desire to "phone home" reflected an extensive telecom campaign to encourage casual long distance calls. E.T.'s director, Steven Spielberg, reportedly sold $25 million in product placements in Minority Report, his most recent film.

The rate of product placements on television has dramatically increased in the past year but many of you probably didn't even notice. That's because we live in such a heavily branded environment. Sports fans no longer go to Candlestick Park; they head for 3Com Park. Best-selling writers, like Steven King or Tom Clancy, embed references to specific brands into their fictions to give them a sense of verisimilitude. Racing game fans prefer to drive branded rather than generic vehicles. The early success of MTV demonstrated that consumers were willing to watch what amounted to commercials for rock performers as long as they were entertaining and well-crafted.

As inhabitants of a consumer culture, we broadcast our brand preferences through our clothing and our home decorations. So, why should television characters be any different? The playful references to breakfast cereal on Seinfeld or to specific fashion designers in Sex and the City become running gags. In the near future, local stations will superimpose brands into syndicated sitcoms, much the way that ESPN currently inserts billboards into the background of baseball broadcasts. That bag Ross is carrying in a favorite Friends episode may shift from K-Mart to Krispe Kreme depending on the highest bidder.

Advertisers are quickly discovering that context matters enormously when it comes to product placement. In a single 24 episode, the fictional cellphone users suffer dead batteries, disrupted signals, misplaced phones, coverage boundaries and turned off units. In dramas where life and death depends on whether a call is completed, suspense hinges on the limitations of current mobile technologies as much as their advantages. So, the verdict is still out as to whether 24 helps or hurts the telcos.

The pervasiveness of reality television is only partially a matter of ratings, since the genre represents an important testing ground for product placement strategies. Long-time viewers of Survivor, for example, may recall the Target parachute that became a fading tent, visible in the background of countless shots in the first series, or be able to imitate Tina's southern accent as she described her craving for "Doe-ree-toes." These programs strip contestants of material goods and deprive them of choice; we all get caught up in the emotional drama as players compete to win back their rights to consume.

Extending this same approach to fictional programming, The West Wing portrayed Republican Ainsley's sense of displacement in a Democratic administration by having her try to unsuccessfully order Fresca from a White House eatery that serves only Sprite. Will we be more likely to recall brands if they are linked to dramatic turning points or become defining traits of particular characters?

On the one hand, product placements may be a boon to storytellers, allowing them to sustain a desired emotional pitch across a single episode without commercial interruptions. The commercial-free debut of 24 is being heavily promoted as an aesthetic breakthrough. On the other hand, product placements may significantly compromise artistic integrity. Will television stories be increasingly structured to promote specific brands? Netizens used product placements to identify 24's turncoat early in the season: since Apple had invested heavily in placements, the show's good guys consistently used Macs; the baddies used PCs.

Early research suggests that product placements yield much higher levels of consumer recall than traditional spots. Of course, as the number of product placements increases, their effectiveness will likely decrease. I counted 25 different products hawked during the commercial breaks of a single episode of 24. Who can remember them all? The sparser use of product placements offers a short-term advantage, but what happens when every object in the series is branded?

Consider this as a thought experiment. I have mentioned 21 specific brands (not counting networks) and 15 films, franchises or series in the course of this column. How many of them can you recall? How many of them will you recall tomorrow? Does trying to recall the references to specific programs increase your ability to identify the brands? This experiment will give you some sense of the challenges confronting the advertising industry and why they think, in the short run at least, product placements may be a winning strategy. What consumers think may be another matter altogether.