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Product Placement

Check out today's Wall Street Journal for an article on television product placement. Just this week, Commercial Alert sent a letter signed by journalism professors across the nation urging magazine publishers to adopt rules against product placement in magazines. The letter sums up the problem caused by the advertising industry--that it has no borders, and must become more and more invasive in order to remain profitable:

Now the Wall Street Journal article demonstrates the situation in the television world, where it is sounding more and more like programming is a commercial itself:

In a scene last season on the WB network comedy, the show's star, Amanda Bynes, is eating a bowl of the Kraft Foods Inc. cereal when her sister, played by Jennie Garth, pushes her out of the kitchen.

"I want to sit at a table like a mature adult and eat my Fruity Pebbles," exclaims a frustrated Ms. Bynes. Several minutes later, Ms. Garth yells, "Your Fruity Pebbles are on my folder."

[...]

The 45-year-old Ms. Ganguzza, who counts P&G rival Unilever as one of her clients, isn't the only one feeling the pinch. As consumers increasingly tune out conventional TV commercials, marketers are scrambling to embed their products in the programming itself. As a result, big ad firms, media buyers, talent agencies and entertainment-marketing start-ups are piling into the product-placement field, muscling aside the tiny firms like Ms. Ganguzza's that have dominated it for decades.

[...]

Independent product placers like AIM, of Astoria, N.Y., make money by charging marketers annual fees ranging from about $20,000 to $80,000 or more to get products on a program's set or into the hands of a show's actors. TV-show staffers get the products in exchange for the possibility -- but not a guarantee -- of airtime. In exchange for her retainer, Ms. Ganguzza guarantees her clients a minimum of five placements a year, but last year one client got 68.

These days, firms that buy ad time are trying to include product placements in their ad deals with networks. For example, Havas SA's MPG media-buying arm is placing Tyson Foods Inc.'s chicken nuggets on a coming episode of "Still Standing" on CBS, as part of a big airtime package it bought from CBS parent ViacomInc. that also included traditional commercials and a sponsorship deal.

[...]

But such arrangements could end up costing TV and cable networks big money, because media-buying firms, ad shops or talent agencies, property masters say, are less likely to do them the kind of favors that the small independents do all the time. "Product-placement companies are saving us thousands of dollars," says Mel Cooper, a set decorator on the WB comedy "Grounded for Life," adding, "Some sets need $20,000 worth of products."

Sabrina Wright, who was property master on "Sex and the City," agrees. "I would set my budget at $15,000 for episode and I would only spend $6,000 because I could get that many products for free through product-placement firms," says Ms. Wright, who had Ms. Ganguzza's help in finding everything from a crib to empty bottles of the wrinkle fighter Botox. "Without companies like AIM, I would have never come in under budget."

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