Product Placement: Pack It In

Product placement has finally come to British television but what does it mean for producers, agencies – and viewers? Belinda Archer (brought to you by shots magazine!) looks into the future of branded telly.

In the movie sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Gordon Gekko meets up with his estranged daughter and her husband in a bar. He offers them a drink. “Heineken?” he says, and the camera closes in for an almost laughably long period on a flattering pack shot of the beer.

Welcome to the world of product placement, where brands are, subtly or otherwise, shoehorned right into the heart of the action. This is cinema, of course, where product placement has been alive and kicking for many years.

But it has also been a reality for some time in various television markets, including the US and most of Europe, and on 28 February 2011 Britain finally joined the pack when the prohibition of product placement in British-made TV shows was lifted.

Before this ruling, there was something called ‘prop provision’ on UK television, where specific brands were provided to productions in order to add realism but no money changed hands. As of the end of February, however, hard cash can and will be involved in the provision of – or rather placement of – brands.

The move is being seen as recognition of the increasingly difficult advertising sales market and a sop to the commercial channels that are hungrily looking for alternative revenue streams. Some observers claim it could be worth an extra £100m a year to commercial TV.

But what will become of our programmes? And what will this mean for advertising agencies and production companies? Does the rule change represent a rich opportunity for them or signal the beginning of the end of their core output, making commercials?

Mark Boyd, head of content and creative director at BBH London, says: “It is important to know that this will not be a revolution. There has been product placement in US shows coming over to the UK for years, and of course movies shown on TV in the UK have had product placement in them. This all made the prohibition here ridiculous, and with digital and online, it was even more of an anomaly, so it is good that the change has happened. But it won’t be a gold rush. It’s another tool in the tool kit for advertisers and agencies, rather than a new tool box.”


No McDonald’s in Miss Marple

Boyd points out how the regulations will still be pretty tight. Product placement will be allowed in films, TV series, entertainment shows and sports programmes, but it will still be banned from programmes made for and by the BBC, for instance, while tobacco, alcohol and sugary or high-fat foods will not be allowed. “All of which would have been big spenders,” he notes. News and current affairs will remain product placement-free, as well as children’s, consumer affairs and religious programmes.

“Alcohol and other categories allowed elsewhere will still not be allowed in the UK so product placement just won’t be that big here,” he says.

Darryl Collis, a director of Seesaw Media, one of the UK’s leading specialists in product placement, adds that Ofcom, the TV regulator in the UK, is also extremely cautious about letting the floodgates open:

“Ofcom is being very overprotective and nannyish about it. They are guardians of TV content in the UK so they want to make sure that we don’t go down the route of the more extreme cases in, say, the US where lingering shots of products are allowed for no reason at all.”

One of the key points to be thrashed out is the interpretation of Ofcom’s term ‘undue prominence’ – shows will be allowed to feature product placement but they won’t be allowed to exclusively favour particular brands.

So Ford might tie up a deal with Coronation Street, for instance, but other vehicles will still have to be allowed in the show. And McDonald’s won’t be allowed to book into Miss Marple (should they so wish), because placements will have to be “editorially justified”.

Bad placements make bad publicity

There are, of course, numerous examples of bad and good product placements for the broadcasters, advertisers and their agencies to learn from.

Rachel Barrie, director of strategy and partner at Fallon London, says: “We can all think of ‘obvious’ (in a negative sense) examples in films – from Will Smith’s admiration of Converse All Stars in I, Robot to the very obvious plug for Taco Bell in Demolition Man. The Back to the Future trilogy yells Pepsi, while Michael Bay’s The Island is, unofficially, the most product placementridden film ever. On the other hand, product placement can add a sense of realism, and when used carefully – such as when Elliot tempts his alien friend with Reese’s Pieces in ET – can be even become endearing and moving.”

The point is that bad placements are scoffed at by the viewer, representing potentially negative publicity for a brand, so while brand directors may well want some control in exchange for their product-placement money, it will absolutely go against them if they push for too lingering a pack shot, say, or too unrealistic an endorsement.

“There was a lot of bad product placement in Minority Report and it suffered as a result,” says Collis. “In the Bond movie Casino Royale, the character played by Eva Green is on a train with Daniel Craig deconstructing his character. She says ‘I bet you are the kind of guy who wears a Rolex’. He says, ‘No, Omega’. And she responds: ‘Ah, beautiful’. It’s excruciating. Bad placements leave a bad taste and bad associations in the audience’s mind. Not all publicity is good.”

So what opportunities are there specifically for UK ad agencies and production houses in this new world?

Will the advent of product placement be a rich seam for them? Collis predicts good things. “Product placement opens up all sorts of new advertising opportunities for agencies, production companies and advertisers,” he says. “While good product placement makes your product, in the right environment, ‘current and relevant’, it is also what you then do with that placement where the agencies can come in.”


Exploiting associations

Nokia might, for instance, tie up a product-placement deal in The X Factor, so that viewers see contestants phoning home on their Nokias to say that they are through to the next round, or even Simon Cowell making a call on his Nokia in the back of his Bentley. But Nokia can then exploit the association by featuring

The X Factor in its advertising. “Agencies need to use product placement as a stepping stone to activate the association and exploit it further. It is in everyone’s interest to use the host show in the product’s advertising because it helps the show by generating awareness,” adds Collis.

Rachel Barrie sees there are real, but rather limited, chances for the creative commercial community with the advent of product placement on British TV, and agrees with Boyd that it will not be ‘life-changing’.

“Product placement is simply a new tool to be considered in the comms mix. It has much smaller implications for creative development and production than the rise of digital platforms, for example. There will also be less opportunities here than in the US due to fewer channels and the fact that it is not permitted on the BBC.”

And BBH’s Boyd is even less hopeful about the opportunities for UK production companies in particular. “I can’t see any role for them at all. This  is an opportunity for advertisers to spend time with a different kind of producer, the programme producer. There will be more contact between agencies and clients with a different producer,” he predicts, “and with that will come new opportunities for more business between them. It’s not the end of advertising, though. It won’t zap lots of money away from it. The money might come from PR, for instance.”


Growing spending on placements

Boyd believes that agencies might be better placed than production companies because some have already been working closely with the programme producers on advertiser-funded programming, so they are used to having conversations with TV producers.

Product placement certainly seems to be a boom business in the TV markets where it is allowed, however, so someone will be making money (and the TV channels are convinced there is incremental money to be made, rather than money taken from TV advertising).

According to PQ Media, a pioneer in emerging media research, spending on product placement in Europe’s media is on pace to grow at a double-digit rate from now until 2014. Total spending on product placement across Europe – including television, films, internet, video games, recorded music and other media – is set to expand by 18.2 per cent over the period. “Our research indicates that a marketing strategy that empowers brands to develop emotional connections with target consumers through desired entertainment content will continue to receive a growing portion of marketing budgets,” says Patrick Quinn, CEO of PQ Media.

While product placement is only just beginning to be allowed in the UK, France and Spain have already marched forward. France is the largest European market in all media, according to PQ, followed by Italy,

Germany, Spain and Russia, although Russia is the fastest-growing market. Germany has been one of the most vocal opponents of relaxing the product-placement rules on TV and, as a result, placements tend to appear mostly in film and other media rather than television.


A look at established markets

UK agencies and production companies might like to look at other more established product-placement markets for guidance and indeed inspiration.

The discipline was opened up on Norwegian television in 2010, and Espen Horn, executive producer at the commercials production company Motion Blur in Oslo, says it has been a force for good.

“Product placement has been a good thing and production companies have definitely risen to the challenge, which they have gained a lot from. First and foremost it gives them a new and important finance resource in an ever more competitive market. Secondly, it gives them an opportunity to help design a marketing plan with a product or a client and benefit from further marketing activities,” he says.

For example, when the movie Long Flat Balls II signed a sponsorship and product-placement agreement with Peppes Pizza in Norway, Motion Blur increased its activities to include commercials, radio spots, press and poster and point-of-sale work for the brand. This was not in the original marketing plan for the movie when they started off but developed out of that core product-placement collaboration.



How can production companies muscle in?

“Product placement is absolutely a rich opportunity for production companies and ad agencies,” says Horn.

“I think also that ad agencies will be a lot more involved in this and other ordinary sponsorships due to a complex and ever-changing marketing mix and transmedia distribution.”

Product placement has also been developing in India over the past few years. There was no dramatic lifting of any ban there, rather a gradual evolution, and it remains unencumbered by regulation apart from the fact that alcohol and tobacco brands are banned from using it.

Roopak Saluja, co-founder and managing director of Bang Bang Films, says there are genuine opportunities for commercials production houses to encroach on programme production companies’ territory. His company, in fact, is one of the first to benefit from product placement and exploit it by making a reality TV show for its client, Mattel Fisher Price, about the trials and tribulations of young motherhood.

“It is mostly the channels that do the deals with the brands and then the programme producers get involved. However, what we have done, which is a first in the market, is to produce the whole show ourselves,” he says. “We co-own the concept, we went to Mattel and sold it to them. It is pure entertainment content with Fisher Price branding that doesn’t compromise on the entertainment.”

The 13-part show, called The Tara Sharma Show – Diaries of a New Mum, will air from this April in India, and Saluja anticipates that more of these sorts of deals will follow.

“It is a natural fit for commercials production companies to get involved in product placement because they understand brands and branding a lot better than traditional TV producers. The question is whether they are able to evolve into content producers. Clearly, in the US and the UK, production companies are getting into the digital space so that proves they can produce the quality. Product placement is really the most basic, pedestrian form of branded entertainment, which is building the entire content around the brand,” he says.



British resistance

It is, of course, really early days for this new creative discipline in the UK, and it will probably take time for everyone concerned to work out what their roles can be and to understand the new rules.

“It will be a while before this matures because the TV production community in the UK is conservative,” concludes Boyd. “A lot of the people here have worked for public service TV so they are resistant to this

and the idea of having product placement forced on them. It is at such an early stage that it will be the end of the year before we can really understand what can and can’t be done.”

Perhaps thankfully, it might be a while then before we get Coronation Street’s Ken Barlow ostentatiously sporting a Nike baseball cap, or indeed Miss Marple tucking into a Double Bacon and Egg McMuffin.