Product Placement

“The good, The bad and The obnoxious”

It’s the start of the week; everyone has settled back into his or her cubes and in-between working is most likely daydreaming of some of their favorite shows that will appear this week (unless the Olympics interrupts). Within those shows, you may or may not notice what has become a huge marketing opportunity, product placement.

This is not “The Home Depot” branded Nascar, that is an endorsement.

This is cleverly inserting products into the lives of sitcom, talk-show, broadcast radio and reality shows to subconsciously get viewers to “buy in” to the lifestyle. You trust these actors, dj’s, celebrities right? Don’t you want to use the products they use?

Product Placement can be as subtle as Vitamin Water in the fridge of a celebrities house in MTV Cribz, or Frasier’s BMW, or those ever present Coca-Cola glasses on the American Idols judging desk.

Don’t forget Chelsea Lately’s recent switch from Grey Goose to Belvedere Vodka. Do you really think that her Vodka taste changed?

But it can also be in-your-face obnoxious, as you will see if you watch NBC’s Biggest Loser. In my house, we play a game similar to slug bug, minus the hitting! We see who can be the first to spot the setup for the minute-long product endorsement where the trainers talk about “how good this xyz product smoothie is” or how “starting your day with xyz’s breakfast bar will give you the energy you need to power through your workout”.

Do both work?

Absolutely.

Do I think one works better?

Definitely.

My opinion, and this is just my opinion, is that the subtler the better.

Frazier was a rich successful single man that worked 2 hours a day, wore the finest suits and drove the shiniest BMW’s.

It’s the American Dream!

Watching his show, you aspire to get to that level where you could one day have those things. But had he looked at the camera every time he sunk into his leather upholstery and said “Ooh, nothing better than a BMW” you may not have been so impressed.

No matter how you do it, if you have a product that can fit into this model, I would say go for it.

And don’t overlook social media marketing for this either. A more recent way to place products is having them endorsed on Twitter by celebrities. The Kardashians have Quick Trim and Carls Jr. (what a combo) and P Diddy has Ciroc Vodka. If you follow either of these people (god help you if you do) you will get incessant reminders from them to purchase these products. Not to say that they don’t in-fact love and use these products, but they do get paid by-the-tweet, so take it for what it is.

Either way, the point is reaching your audience where they are, and this is one way that has proven to work.

Now if Red Bull could just get Apolo Ohno to skate over to his manager holding his celebratory can after his next medal winning race, that would be perfect.

Oh wait; I think Gatorade already has this placement taken.

Cheers,

Josh Fedie

The “Adholics”

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