September 28th, 2002
The Spy Who Loved Nokia, And Other Next-Stage Ads
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post
The villains in the second episode of ABC’s new mystery show “Push, Nevada” zoomed ominously through the rippling desert heat in a line of three black sedans. The Lexus “L” logos on the front grilles shimmered in the sunlight as the cars passed the camera.
Later in the hour-long program, a bumbling sheriff and his deputy ferried the show’s main character in an SUV made by Toyota Motor Corp., which owns Lexus. When characters talked on their cell phones in the third episode, which aired last Thursday, it was clear to viewers that the denizens of Push use Sprint phones.
And so it will go throughout the 13 episodes of the series, in which advertisers are paying to have their products written into scripts. Sprint phones and Toyota vehicles are as integral to “Push, Nevada” as the show’s quirky dialogue and avant-garde camera tricks.
Movie viewers may be used to seeing commercial goods placed in films, but product placement on television will be popping up on this fall’s new shows like never before, as studios, networks and cable channels scramble for fresh sources of revenue.
The studios that make the shows have been hammered by rising actor salaries and production costs in recent years. The networks that broadcast the shows are still digging out of the 2001 advertising recession, the worst in 50 years. Further, all the networks are continuing to lose audience to cable and with that loss, attendant ad revenue. The cable channels and local stations want a piece of the action, too.
At Disney-owned ABC, the need is most urgent. The network has languished in third place in the ratings over the past two years in addition to weathering the same ad slump as the other networks. Poorly watched shows get fewer ad dollars; product placement is a way to squeeze more money from advertisers. In turn, advertisers get one more avenue to reach viewers—one that is impossible to skip over, like a commercial.
Even though television product placement is in its infancy, it is already drawing fire from anti-commercialism groups for blurring the line between advertising and entertainment. The television industry, meanwhile, is debating issues such as what say actors, writers and others should have in the placement of products.
The discussions can even involve shows that have already aired. Studios have figured out how to use new special effects technology to insert products in syndicated programs to make more money once shows end their initial runs. Imagine a Pepsi can on a table in a rerun of “Friends” that wasn’t there when the show was filmed.
In addition to revenue concerns, the television industry is turning to product placement because of a looming technology arms race between viewer and broadcaster. The television industry faces a growing threat from digital video recorders—the next generation of VCRs—that allow viewers to zoom right past commercials, sometimes automatically.
“Going forward, the overall trend is that the average network ratings are going down slightly,” said Mike Shaw, ABC Network’s president of sales and marketing. “We do need to look for other ways for advertisers’s products to be viewed.”
Product placement will appear on all the networks this fall, as well as on some cable shows, such as HBO’s “Sex & the City.” Sometimes, the addition is blatant. Some television executives cite the original “Survivor” on CBS.
“All of a sudden, they threw a bag of Dorito’s on the table in front of these starving people,” said one industry executive. “That didn’t feel like something you’d find on a desert island.”
On reality shows such as Fox’s “American Idol,” it was nearly impossible to judge where the show ended and the ads for corporate sponsors Ford and Coca-Cola began. Coke cups were in every shot involving the judges during auditions for the show; during the show itself, contestants were shown riding in a Ford Focus and the Coke logo was omnipresent.
ABC has aggressively taken the lead in learning how to more subtly combine advertising and editorial content, both in its prime-time and daytime shows.
Last season, ABC crafted what it—and some others—considers the gold standard for product placement in an episode of “Alias,” the network’s Sunday night spy show.
“Alias” has a product-placement deal with cell phone maker Nokia. In one episode last season, the show’s star—Jennifer Garner—was shown walking through an underground parking garage. She saw a suspicious-looking man having an innocuous conversation on his cell phone. She flipped open her cell phone and saw the “no service” message, indicating to her that the man was only pretending to talk on his cell and possibly posed a threat to her.
Just above the “no service” message was the money shot: The Nokia brand name prominently displayed for about three seconds. ABC will continue its deal with Nokia this season in “Alias,” as well as deals for product placement in the ABC comedy, “My Wife and Kids.” Additionally, ABC will sell one-time-only product placements in other shows, the network said.
Wary of potential viewer backlash, ABC decided to sell placement deals on “Push” to just two advertisers. “We don’t want to impose this. It needs to be as organic and transparent as possible,” Wallau said. Given that, however, he added, “we could’ve sold more than three, I promise you.”
The “Push” deals are part of a larger package of undisclosed amounts that includes both Sprint and Toyota buying 30-second commercials during the show. No ads for other cell phone or carmakers will air during the show. Network officials would not say how much advertisers pay for product placement.
“The ability to do product placement makes one [television show] more attractive than another to a potential advertiser,” said Peggy Green, president of national broadcast for Zenith Media, an ad buyer. She cautions, however: “We have to figure this one all out. You can get a headache if you see too much product. We are entering a new frontier.”
ABC is working product placement into many different parts of the day. This past spring, scriptwriters for the daytime soap “All My Children” wrote cosmetics maker Revlon into the plot for a fee. Some called it “plot placement.”
Revlon wanted a big advertising push to help recover some of its lost market share and came to ABC’s Daytime division looking for something more than a string of 30-second commercials. Angela Shapiro, head of Daytime, knew that “All My Children” had an upcoming story line featuring the cosmetics business of its main character, played by Susan Lucci. The show needed a rival cosmetics company, so, instead of making up one, they solicited Revlon to be Lucci’s competitor.
Though ABC would not guarantee how many mentions per show Revlon would get, the network did promise that the company would be featured in a positive light and would not be involved in any potentially unfortunate plot twists. Revlon appeared in at least one episode per week, often more.
In turn, Revlon dumped its entire second-quarter television budget into ABC Daytime, estimated to be worth at least $ 3 million.
“Advertisers and clients are not looking for just 30-second announcements,” said Gail Sullivan, senior vice president for sales for ABC Daytime. “They’re looking for ways above and beyond that to grow their brand.”
There is a wall between television shows and commercials; product placement is a way for advertisers to break down that wall and become a part of the environment of the show, an association they believe will help them.
“They are creating this web of associations around the product,” said Charlene Davis, an assistant professor of marketing at Trinity University in San Antonio, who studies the viewer-consumer relationship. “It is being used by a character you like in a show you presumably like—it doesn’t get a lot better than that in terms of modeling certain types of behaviors and linking your brand with something the consumer already likes.”
But that could be construed as an implied endorsement, something the actor may not be happy with. Or may want to get paid for. Further, the actor may feel that, if he’s pictured drinking a Coke on the show, rival cola makers may not seek him out for endorsements. Finally, the show’s executive producer and writers usually must check off on the product placement because it makes their show more commercial.
“If you can get over all those hurdles, then this is a potential new revenue stream for not only the networks, but also the copyright holders of programming,” said Bruce Rosenblum, executive vice president of the television group at Warner Bros., which produces shows such as “E.R.” and “Friends” for the networks.
Some carping about the practice has already begun.
A small vanguard of media critics and anti-ad activists has begun to coalesce over the past couple of years. Spearheaded by a group co-founded by Ralph Nader, called Commercial Alert and Adbusters—an anti-commercialism activist group—they complain that the line between real, journalistic or artistic content and commercial message is getting so blurred that it’s impossible to differentiate between information and advertising.
“If our entire culture is turned into an infomercial, you can’t really trust anything that you see or hear in the media,” said Robert McChesney, a media studies professor at the University of Illinois at Ubana-Champaign and author of “Rich Media, Poor Democracy.”
Agreed, said Gary Ruskin, the other co-founder of Commercial Alert, which is dedicated to keeping “the commercial culture within its proper sphere,” as its Web site says.
“Ads are creeping into every nook and cranny of our culture. You can’t turn around without running into a commercial,” Ruskin said. Lask week, Ruskin’s group asked Congress and state legislatures to pass a parents’ Bill of Rights that would, among other provisions, force corporations to disclose which television shows, movies, video games and books they’ve placed products in.
It’s too early to tell definitively whether viewers like or dislike product placement, said Davis, the marketing professor, though results of recent studies on product recall and recognition should be encouraging to advertisers.
“Even when the subjects had been aware of [product placement] and maybe felt a little cynical about it . . . it still had an impact in recall and recognition, and not in negative way,” Davis said. “They seemed to be saying, ‘You can irritate us, but we will still recall the product,’ which is the first step to getting us to purchase a product.”
Syndication represents a vast blank slate into which an almost infinite number of products can be placed with great precision—and into perpetuity. For instance, a candy bar that sells better in the Midwest could be inserted into an episode of “The Drew Carey Show” airing in Chicago, while a different candy bar could be inserted into the same episode running in Atlanta.
Princeton Video Image, a New Jersey technology company, will digitally insert products into any show, live or taped, as many times and in as many ways as a client desires. It plans to use the technique on syndicated shows for the first time this fall, though the firm would not reveal the names of the shows.
The company appeared on the scene in 1998, when Princeton developed technology to show the first-down marker in televised NFL games. By use of sophisticated computer pattern recognition, the yellow line appears as though it is on the football field, and players appear to walk over it. Instead, it is digitally inserted into the live video feed.
Now, Princeton is in hot demand as a way to insert products into syndicated shows, largely owing to the threat of digital video recorders.
James Green, Princeton’s president, said advertisers are asking: “What happens if people really do start skipping a lot of ads? I’d better have my product embedded in the show one way or another.”
The process works like this: A syndicator will identify a show it wants to place products in. The syndicator will bring a year’s run of the show, usually about 22 episodes, to Princeton, which will watch all the tapes and look for potential insertion spots.
Princeton typically will recommend placing one or two products per 30 minutes’ worth of show, with each getting 15 to 30 seconds of screen time. “Everyone is walking on eggshells,” Green said. “There is definitely the potential for viewer backlash.”
Princeton creates an inventory of space available in the show, which the syndicator’s sales staff then takes to potential advertisers. Princeton takes a percentage of the ad revenue that the product placement generates.
“On the advertiser’s side, being able to do this posthumously means you get to see exactly where [your product] goes,” Green said. “There’s no risk that your product could end up on the cutting room floor or depicted in a way that was not expected.”
There was an episode of “Friends” that aired in January 2000 featuring a Pottery Barn table. There was no product-placement deal—the writers wrote the table into the script on their own. Result? Pottery Barn was sold out of the table for months.
“Today, you’d go to Pottery Barn and say, ‘We want to do an episode that features one of your tables,’ “ said one television industry executive. “ ‘Do you want to contribute to this episode? It would mean a lot of money for you guys.’ They probably would be prepared to pay.”
Staff writer Vincent Bzdek contributed to this report.