Making Your Mark In Movies And TV

Nation's Business, Dec, 1998 by Dale D. Buss

Placement typically makes sense only if' you distribute nationally or expect to do so. For example, Old Smoky Products Co. is a Houston-based manufacturer of barbecue grills with a distinctive appearance, and it wants to expand beyond the Southeast. So it has launched a placement program with Motion Picture Magic, an agency in Los Angeles. "We're pleased with the potential," says Robert Rollins, marketing consultant for the company 'There are a lot of TV shows and movies with outdoor scenes where people are cooking."

Indeed, some product categories simply lend themselves to placement more than others do. Anything that stars actually consume or wear, for example, makes sense. Lots of moviegoers noticed the RayBans on Tom Cruise in "Risky Business" and on Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in "Men in Black." Julia Roberts just happened to wear her personal sunglasses in "My Best Friend's Wedding," but that didn't stop legions of viewers from trying to find a pair just like them.

"People really do watch what actors are eating, drinking, and wearing," says Kim Lane, account executive for Catalyst Group, a product-placement agency in Burbank, Calif.

Do your research.

If you decide to pursue this type of product exposure, determine the placement environment you'd like for your products or services; even think about specific set-decoration opportunities, for instance, as you watch a TV series.

Figure out what venues your customers might be seeing. "Pick shows you like and understand and that your customers might see," advises Linda Demeduk, production coordinator for NBC's hit sitcom "Mad About You."

If your product is strictly local, you might offer it to lend authenticity to a production where geographic veracity and texture are important.

To keep abreast of coming productions, scan entertainment trade publications and Web sites. For those that might be filmed in your area, call the film-production offices in your state or city

Understand TV's peculiarities.

Television can be a much more complicated environment than movies for product placement. Unlike movies, for example, the TV-production industry takes a hiatus in spring and summer, so don't expect to reach people at those times.

More significant, the TV-placement game is deliberately much murkier than movies. That's because the Federal Communications Commission regulates product claims-or anything that might be perceived as such-on TV.

And because advertisers pay dearly to showcase their brands in and around TV shows, companies can't pay to have their products featured within TV shows. Often in fact, identifiable products' packaging is disguised to look generic or at least unidentifiable.

Thus, placements that clear the barriers of TV always have been determined largely by creative demands and by relationships. Jerry Seinfeld pushed the bounds of TV placement by integrating specific products into the "nonplot" plots that became his show's signature.

By doing so, he basically dared NBC's standards-and-practices staff to stop him. As a result, television writers and producers are generally feeling more freedom to use product placement, and marketers are scouting around for the next potentially big vehicle.