"Fed Ex in Castaway; Reeses
Pieces in ET; Suntory Whiskey
in Lost in Translation, that's
who you really want to be,"
Mulholland declares
Place the product
Superbrands involve themselves in movies in a number of ways. As
mentioned above, celebrity endorsements go all the way back to the
beginning of film-making with stars lending their high profiles to products.
That still happens as everyone knows, but more clever ways of leveraging
products into the view of advertisement-weary consumers have ascended.
Product placement - the use of real brands as props in movies - is
happening more and more in movies and television, especially as
traditional ad dollars decrease. "The Apprentice is a very good example,
Mark Burnett [the producer] is at the forefront of this new model. They get
brands to come in and they have competition around these brands and it
really helps authenticate the content of the show, it makes it credible
because if they were fictitious brands who cares?" Mulholland explains.
When you see a can of Coca Cola on a table, when you see a celebrity drive
into a scene with a Honda it's typically not accidental, the result of a well
negotiated contract that stipulates who gets what from the content. While
Bond driving an Aston Martin was one of the earliest product placements
with a negotiated contract, classic moments like when ET ate Reeses Pieces
brought product placement to the fore. Mike Myers in Wayne's World even
parodied the use of product placement by declaring blatantly that he
wanted to drink Coca Cola in mock advertising grin. "Fed Ex in Castaway,
Reeses Pieces in ET; Suntory Whiskey in Lost in Translation, that's who you
really want to be," Mulholland declares. "You want to be part of the
storyline; integration versus product placement." Some brands are
rumored to pay millions for the right brand integration, especially ones
that are 'in-script'.
A
That's not the norm though: most superbrands offer a mix of deals to place
the product in a film, hard dollars are rarely passed between partners.
Typically, the brand is offering a marketing campaign that helps the studio
boost its ticket sales, raise the film's promotional presence by letting the
brand use the stars in commercials and other above-the-line products.
"Product placement is another way to get your message across if you do it
right," says Drenth, "for me there's a difference in passive product
placement and more active product placement. More passive is just being
there, a sign, just behind the bar. A more active one is in-script: in such a
way that the role of Heineken best represents the brand. It doesn't happen
very often and that's the difficulty with product placement. That's also the
difficulty with film because the process of positioning the brand exactly the
way you want is hugely difficultWe have to deal with producers, we have
to deal with directors, actors and talents who do or don't want to be
associated with alcohol, it's highly insecure. You can have a deal that
Heineken will be part of a film in a way but you are dependent on others to
do it right. We need to be very careful in the way we do it: in a very
relevant way. That's a challenging process, because we don't control that
process," says Drenth with a certain caution and institutional knowledge
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