Product Placement

Product placement is a form of advertisement, where branded goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, the story line of television shows, or news programs. The product placement is often not disclosed at the time that the good or service is featured. The latest trend in advertising is to make it, well, less advertorial. The tendency is to move away from inyour-face ads, where the product is the star, to mini-movies or quasidocumentary vignettes that feature "real-life scenarios" with the product(s) hovering in the background. Some would argue it's a sort of "art imitating art imitating life" scenario -- where ads are imitating the practice of product placement. Basically, there are three ways product placement can occur: • It simply happens. • It's arranged, and a certain amount of the product serves as compensation. • It's arranged, and there is financial compensation. BOLLYWOOD AND HOLLYWOOD PROMOTIONAL MANIA Companies are using movies as a medium to promote their brands regularly in Bollywood. These types of promotions have been prevalent in Hollywood for quite some time now and Indian marketers have started testing this innovative mode of promotion. Movies like James Bond have tie-ups with global brands like BMW and Omega. The studio and the filmmakers can these days even get selective and specific in terms of the creative content for tie-ins, feeling they need to be organic to the genius of the writing of the movie, and not too many partners can pull that off. The task was to announce the movie as an event and creating an event. It wasn't about lining up as many partners as possible; it was about having the right partners in the right context and the right message. Lage Raho Munnabhai is a classic Indian example where the title of the movie was changed from its initial offering because of the tie-up with Alpenlibe. Go Air also was prominent in the same movie. One of the latest movies; ChakDe India has brands like Puma, ESPN, Greyhound etc being a part of the various others being promoted in the movie. The collaboration made perfect sense for Puma due to the significance of the Hockey context. Another international example is Simpsons the Movie. Timex, JetBlue airlines and various other brands. Sony Ericsson majorly used Spiderman 3 and James Bond to position itself further as a model filled with the latest savvy features a mobile can provide. Products that can be advertised in this fashion range from cars to soft drinks, clothes to cigarettes. The cigarettes case is particularly interesting since tobacco advertising is actually banned in many countries.