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.