So you think all advertising is the same? Discover its much-ignored, but highly successful half-cousin called Product Placement. It's legal, decent, honest and not half as irritating -- or expensive.

This article was published in September 1997

A PLUG BY ANY OTHER NAME

What you are about to read can ruin the way you watch movies forever. A man and woman emerge from a steamy elevator scene. He straightens out his tie; she rearranges her hair, and the elevator doors open to reveal a sign of the American Airlines terminal. Only a glimpse, mind you. No music score under it, and nothing to give you a clue that it's the equivalent of a full-page ad in a magazine, but it's definitely, unsuspectingly, undeniably an ad. And guess what? You willingly contributed to a highly successful industry they call 'product placement' that made you focus --albeit fleetingly--on a product before you got on with your movie.

But does it work? Does it qualify as a valid piece of marketing communication? Or deeper still, do these logos and posters, these glimpses of shopping bags, store signage and actual products in fact burn a hole in our retinas to qualify as advertising. Eighty percent of the time we notice them but that does not make them surreptitious or intrusive. To a large extent, this is uncharted territory. There may be no 'science' to it, but companies claim that product placement actually pushes the sales index. Before you run away with the idea that this is an extension of Vance Packard's 'Hidden Persuaders', let me say at the outset that this is not pushing the envelope. Nothing devious. Nothing manipulative. No one for a moment is trying to make a sales pitch to your subconscious (so forget the subliminal theories your lecturers made you believe), because if at all, this invites the opposite kind of criticism: a blatant marketing angle that can only be effective if it jumps up and down, tugging at your sleeve demanding your attention. Like the braggart at the office who's constantly telling you about his uncle's Lexus or his brother's Ray Bans, product placement is just that: Name dropping.

Did someone mention Ray Bans? Which of you remember a chap called Tom Cruise prior to 1981? If you're thinking of 'Cocktail', sorry, that was after he became the cute rising star in 'Risky Business'. That was a year after Ray Bans undertook some risky business themselves since they were considering discontinuing their badly performing Wayfarer product that year. The company's Product Placement agency, (UPP), asked the makers of the movie to allow Tom what's-his-name, and the rest is history. Not only did Wayfarer that was selling a meager 20,000 pieces a year jump to 15 million pairs a year, but UPP likes to make it seem that it was Ray Bans that made Tom Cruise the hottest property in the Hollywood circuit.

It would be a rotten day when movies replaced product placement with commercial breaks. Imagine the horror of being interrupted in the middle of a shower scene in 'Schindler's List' for a commercial about Anton PVC pipes?Filling the Gaps in Advertising

But you don't always need a cool guy to sip your product or use your in-flight service. Drooling babies, prehistoric creatures with bad table manners, and extra terrestrials are good endorsers too in this medium that is notorious for demanding a 'temporary suspension of disbelief'. Pampers paid $50,000 for the exposure its product got in 'Three men and a baby'. Now I don't know about your company, but even in America, where some ad budgets are bigger that some company's annual sales, not anyone can afford to get celebrity endorsements, let alone superstars to use their product. That's where product placement is filling a gap in advertising, with product association serving as a useful tool in brand building. Lux can getaway with getting movie stars to spout a few uncreative lines about it's perfumed cakes of sodium stearate, but given the fact that celebrity burnout is accelerating, there's just no sense in investing big bucks in long-term contracts anymore. (Ask Sony and Pepsi about Michael Jackson). Besides, today's product placement is a lot more sophisticated that getting a Black & Decker truck to block the path of a hijacked school bus. Today it's getting the driver of the hijacked bus to whip out your product -- as in the case of the 1994 movie Speed, where actor Keanu Reeves uses a nifty, yet sturdy multi-tool called the Leatherman to pry open an elevator door. Needless to say that the Leatherman is beating the socks out of its wannabees, and has probably sent the marketing team behind the Swiss Army Knife scrambling to be the tool of choice in Rambo 42.

Which almost makes us want to rethink the unchallenged norms of conventional advertising.