The hidden history of product placement

Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Dec, 2006 by Jay Newell, Charles T. Salmon, Susan Chang

Within 6 months the first examples of product placement would be filmed. In the spring of 1896, the Lumiere brothers entered into a distribution and production arrangement with Francois-Henri Lavanchy-Clarke, a Swiss businessman who functioned as a European distributor and promoter for the U.K. soap manufacturer Lever Brothers (Cosandrey & Pastor, 1992; Mannoni, 2000). For the Lumiere brothers, Lavanchy-Clarke would exhibit films in Switzerland as well as shoot Swiss-located motion pictures for distribution in Europe and the United States. For Lever Brothers, Lavanchy-Clarke publicized their leading product, Sunlight Soap (Lavanchy-Clarke, 1922). It was this connection between Lavanchy-Clarke, Lever Brothers, and the Lumieres that resulted in the first product placements in motion pictures. In May 1896, in the yard of the Geneva home of Lavanchy-Clarke, Cin6matographe operator Alexandre Promio shot a film of two women hand-washing tubs of laundry. Placed prominently in front of the tubs were two cases of Lever Brothers soap, one with the French branding "Sunlight Savon," the other with the German "Sunlight Seife." The following month, the film, given the English title Washing Day in Switzerland (Promio, 1896), was shown in New York at Keith's Union Square Theatre, along with shots of European trains, French parades, and various skits ("Notes of the Summer Shows," 1896). Sunlight Soap slyly reappeared in a film shot that fall in Lausanne. Titled Defile du 8e Battalion (Girel, 1896), a wheelbarrow displaying the Sunlight Soap logo and accompanied by a tuxedoed Lavanchy-Clarke is placed in the foreground between the camera and the parade. The business of product placement had begun.

Product Placement in Edison Films, 1897 and Beyond

Although the first documented appearance of a product placement occurred in Lumiere Brothers films, it was Thomas Edison who turned product placement into an ongoing business that provided twin benefits of reducing out-of-pocket production expenses while providing promotional services for customers of his industrial businesses. Edison's film crews were provided transportation by the same rail lines that purchased railroad equipment from Edison's manufacturing division. The films in turn promoted the consumer purchase of rail tickets in the competitive passenger market. Transportation services of little direct use by the audience were rarely shown. Of the 52 Edison films featuring trains, only two trains were freights, and one of those freight trains displayed a banner promoting the freight service. Edison films also were not beyond self-promotion. The 1905 Streetcar Chivalry takes place in a commuter car placarded with posters for Edison products such as phonographs (Edison, 1905).

Some Edison films integrated advertising messages that were more akin to commercials than product placements. For example, in July 1897, his Black Maria studio was the setting for perhaps the first advertising film: 50 seconds of men smoking in front of an Admiral Cigarettes billboard (Musser, 1997). But although some of the Edison films were overt offers of products and services, product placements as subtle efforts to influence audience attitude and behavior became a specialty of Edison's. His catalog listed hundreds of travelogues, such as trips to the Far West, Niagara Falls, and Hawaii, along with dozens of railroad films. The travel films were popular with the working class audience, and just as important, their production costs were subsidized in part by the transportation companies. For example, a few months after Lumiere exhibited Wash Day in New York, Edison film producers James Henry White and William Heise, accompanied by executives of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, filmed one of the railroad's fast passenger trains, The Black Diamond Express, passing the camera. According to news reports, the film crew was transported in a private railcar provided by the railroad (Musser, 1991). Similarly, the Pennsylvania Railroad provided a special photography car for a later film, A Ride Through the Pack Saddle Mountains (1899), and was credited in the catalog (Musser, 1997). The Edison film A Romance of the Rail (Porter, 1903) mirrored the Erie-Lackawanna's promotional campaign for cleaner-burning anthracite coal with a love story of a couple who meet on a train, the future bride's clothes unsullied by smoke.