box office hit equals big brand exposure

Ghost Rider staring Nicholas Cage tops the box office this week. Big success for movies means lots of exposure for those brands that have paid for product placement. This website, brandchannel.com, talks about all of those products that were placed within this movie.

This movie is about a motorcycle stuntman (Nicholas Cage) that sells his soul to save his girlfriend (Eva Mendes). The stuntman, Johnny Blaze, rides a Harley Davidson, a Buell for stunting, and a fictional bike known as the Hellcycle. The Harley Davidson is knows as a motorcycle for serious motorcycle riders. Its style is easily recognizable and got plenty of promotion with this movie. Sony also has quite a bit of product placement throughout the movie. All the televisions were Sony, including the jumbotron at the Sobe dome, according to the article.

These product placements definitely target consumers. The companies want consumers to be the first brand they think of when they are looking to purchase a product, like a motorcycle or television. I think that either consciously or subconsciously, consumers will probably think of Harley Davidson for motorcycles or Sony for televisions. Harley is already ahead of the game in top of mind awareness with consumers. I know when I think motorcycles that Harley Davidson is the first brand to come to my mind. On the other hand, I think Sony televisions may be lacking in the area of top of mind awareness, so it was definitely a good investment to place products within this movie. Top of the box office means that the movie is getting a ton of viewers, which means a ton of potential consumers for Harley Davidson and Sony.

Cover Girl in "Cathy's Book"

An article published in the New York Times by Motoko Rich, entitled "Product Placement Deals Make Leap from Film to Books" discusses how the Cover Girl brand will being making an appearance in a novel called Cathy's Book: If Found Call (650)266-8233.

This is an unusual kind of product placement because the authors are not being paid to promote the brand. Instead, the book is being promoted on Beinggirl.com, a website aimed at adolescent girls, which are the same target market for the book.

The article makes an excellent point: viewers of television programs and movies see products and automatically assume that the appearances are paid for by the companies that manufacture the brands. Produt placements in books is a new thing. Some books do already mention brands, but usually do not have product placement deals made with those brands. On the opposite end of the spectrum some companies have paid authors to write books that feature their brand's name. The good thing about Cathy's Book is that the book had already been written, and the brand was just inserted where appropriate. The book was not totally re-written. Instead, the authors changed "gunmetal grey eyeliner," for example, to "eyecolor in Midnight Metal."

I think the way this book works in the product placements is tasteful and appropriate. It mentions the products without shoving them in your face, and it still maintains the integrity of the book. Books that written because the author has been paid to write the book around the brand, I think may be too obvious. It ruins the author's writing. To write is to be inventive and let the mind flow with whatever may come. I feel that being pressured to incorporate a brand may make the story feel stiff and forced.

It will be interesting to track product placements within books in the future to see which route, as to how the book was written and the placement worked in, the book will take.

participation...

I was recently out to dinner at a little place called Simeons on the Commons when I started thinking about and noticing product placement. Have you ever noticed that in some restaurants they use glassware with brands printed on them? Simeons glasses had their label on one side and a Guiness label on the other side. In other restaurants, you'll notice Pepsi or Coke labels on glasses. Companies often send these glasses to establishments to help promote their brands. This also functions as a type of product placement. You are unwillingly exposed to the use of a product, but instead of seeing someone in a television program or movie using the product, you are using it. It's comparable to seeing Coke glasses on the table in front of the American Idol judges, but it's in front of you. I would describe this type of product placement as active participation product placement because of the interaction between you and the product.

I also noticed product placement this week while watching a video in my Ad Copy and Art Direction class. The video showed a behind the scenes look at putting together an advertising campaign for a Brazilian liquor. One of their techniques was to put real people, taken straight off the streets, in display windows with the bottles of liquor sitting at their tables as they sipped on mixed drinks made from the same liquor. Passers-by could easily gaze in the windows and observe this product placement or enter the "window bar" and enjoy a drink themselves. I think this idea of actively participating in product placement could do big things in the future for many products. More people are beginning to be able to spot typical product placements, and this may be a way to shake things up and keep consumers interested.
What do you think?

Do you remember?

Nielsen ratings have predicted that as many as eight out of every ten viewers never see commercial advertisements because they simply skip the ads using their TiVo or DVR, according to an article by Tom Dorsey of the Courier Journal of Louisville, Kentucky. This article stresses the importance of putting advertisements in the form of product placements within the storyline. This way, if viewers want to watch the show, they are forced to view the advertisement. There's no skipping these "commercials" when they become part of the program. The article specifically places Applebee's restaurants as a sponsor/product placement with in NBC's Friday Night Lights.

Although viewers are guaranteed not to skip the "advertisements" known as product placements, it does not guarantee that they will remember who or what the product placement was for. The author of the article specifically asks viewers of Friday Night Lights if they remember what restaurant was featured in the show and some can recall, but others cannot.

I think this author makes a good point. Take last Sunday's episode of Desperate Housewives for example. Eva Longoria's character was shown shopping for a mattress at, specifically, Macy's. How many viewers are going to spot the Macy's sign in the program? And how many viewers are going to be able to tell you that it was definitely Macy's that she was shopping at out of all the department stores out there? Recall may be one thing that companies may need to improve upon. Since they've found a way to make you view their ads, all they have to do now is to make you remember them.

product placement goes mobile!

Check out this article from brandweek.com! I think this is really neat. Sprint Nextel subscribers are going to be able to download EA Sports Nascar 07 to their mobile phones starting in March. The game will feature the sponsors for the drivers and their cars. It really wouldn't be Nascar without Jeff Gordon's Dupont or Tony Stewart's Home Depot, would it? Twenty different brands will be represented in total as product placement. This will be the first game by EA games for mobile phones to feature product placement! I think that's quite the achievement. It's said that there is no sign of stopping here. More product placement is definitely on the way for mobile games, especially considering the ways EA games has found to place products in games for consoles, such as Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii.

Product placement has really expanded within the last few years. Not only is it apparent in television and movies, but now obviously with video games for gaming consoles as well as mobile phones. Advertisers are finding new and more creative ways to reach consumers. Where will product placement show up next? Only time and technology can tell.

What might be cool?

I found an interesting article about "Generation XBox" by a professor at the University of Southern California. What is generation XBox you might ask? Well, the article describes them as media-savvy young adults.
With advances in technology, including DVR and TiVo, it has become increasingly difficult to get people to watch commercials. Why watch commercials if you can just skip them all together? That's where product placement comes in. Some product placement is obvious, while others not so much.
Generation XBox loves product placement, according to this article found on Media Magazine, but only when it's done right. Product placements on reality shows are blatantly obvious and not so much appreciated. Take American Idol for example. It placed #1 for product placements in 2006 with the judges sipping on their Cokes (below), and the contestants driving around in Ford Mustangs (in those little weekly "music videos" they do). On the other hand, Generation XBox, really loves product placements done in scripted television shows and movies. According to the article, they tend to rely on prduct placements in their favorite shows and movies to predict the trends and "what might be cool." The author of the article describes HBO's Entourage as and example of "good-looking people living a cool life that simply fit in the picture." Here's an example:

These are Nike's Fukijama sneakers featured on the show. Although they aren't real, they won "Best Product Placement of the Week" by Hollywood Product Placement News back in December. They're actually Nike's Air Force Ones just designed a bit differently. They just might be the next big thing.

Keep looking for more product placements in your favorite televison shows. I'd love to hear what you can find.

Something worth talking about...

I just watched an online video for class in which Seth Godin, an author of six bestsellers, gave a great speech to Google about their marketing efforts. He speaks about a traditional model of marketing, which he calls the "TV-industrial complex." This circle of actions basically includes buying ads, getting more distribution, selling more products, making profits and investing those profits into buying more ads and so on. Godin suggests an alternate model which he calls "the fashion permission complex." This model starts with making something worth talking about. Consumers want to be intrigued. Next, tell it to people who want to hear from you. They want to be told about things they want to know about, when they want to know about them. A bonus to this model comes with the third step. These people tell their friends. They do what the traditional marketers used to do by running ads, but this way, it's free! Lastly, you must get permission from people to tell them about your next "fashion."

I think this is absolutely genius. Marketers only end up telling people about the things that they're interested in; therefore, they aren't wasting time and money on people who couldn't care less. On top of that, marketers are getting free word of mouth promotion when consumers tell their friends, family, co-workers, etc. about the product or "fashion." And if you followed suit with the first step, making something worth talking about, then you may just get permission from the consumer to alert them when you come up with another cool idea.

I've only touched on some of the genius that Seth Godin presents in his video. You can watch it by clicking here.
So I know what you're thinking... "How is this relevant to product placement?" Have a little faith.Here's an example. I was watching One Tree Hill on the CW last week and noticed that one of the characters was using a cellularphone featuring Cingular wireless service. The character happens to be really into music. She was using a program through the phone and wireless service to identify the artist and title of a song playing on the radio. The phone "listens" to the song and in return gives you title and artist. How cool, right? Now that's something worth talking about! Product placement can start the cycles in which consumers are intrigued and conversations are held about the products seen in programs or movies.