product placement

PRODUCT-PLACEMENT

In the generically minded film world of a generation ago, an on-screen soda bottle was simply labeled "root beer" and a tennis shoe was -- well, any old shoe. Nowadays, the movie and TV industries are molding products, logos, and slogans into the very building blocks of popular culture -- often without audiences realizing it. Enterprise Online now presents an informal product-placement Hall of Fame. Several transcendent instances in which movies or TV shows changed the fate of real-life products, services, or brands:
Hey, this is for real! Reese's Pieces, ET (1982): The decision to feature Reese's Pieces in ET catapulted the product-placement craft into the Hollywood mainstream. Reese's Pieces leapt onto kids' mental menus and sales shot up 65%; Mars, the maker of M&Ms, had passed on the opportunity.
Pitch your weakness, not your strength: Budget Rent-a-Truck, Home Alone (1990). Budget was a major player in car rentals, but its truck-rental business was being obscured by household names like U-Haul and Ryder. Budget struck gold when it put polkameister John Candy and his merry band -- along with Jan Hooks, playing Macaulay Culkin's mom -- in a Budget moving van making the long haul back to Chicago.
Selling high: Red Stripe beer, The Firm (1993). Placement can enhance brand value at strategic times. When Tom Cruise visits Gene Hackman in the Cayman Islands, Hackman suggests that he "grab a Red Stripe," so Cruise opens the fridge for a bottle of the Jamaican-brewed beer. Within a month of the film's release, Red Stripe sales in the U.S. had increased by more than 50%, and just a few weeks later, company owners sold a majority stake in their brewery for $62 million to Guinness Brewing Worldwide.
If you can, get it in writing: Reebok, Jerry Maguire (1996) Reebok sued Sony TriStar Pictures for $10 million, claiming it violated a placement agreement. Reebok got a settlement, but only after suffering another indignity: The company was only mentioned once, when it was bad-mouthed by the pro-footballer played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.
Ray-Ban sunglasses: Risky Business (1983), Men in Black (1997). Because they adorn the on-screen faces of the stars, sunglasses have come to occupy a prime role in product placement. The Swiss Army brand placed its logo in the asteroid thriller Armageddon.
Too much is enough, 007: Visa card, Avis car rentals, BMW cars and motorcycles, Smirnoff vodka, Heineken beer, Omega watches, Ericsson cell phones, L'Oreal makeup, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Purists could stomach the discrete promotion of James Bond's hot cars over the years, from Aston Martins to the new Z-3 Golden Eye (1995), which helped BMW turn the roadster's launch into one of the most successful new-car introductions ever. But critics flailed at Tomorrow because it seemed to be one long-running commercial.
By Dale Buss in Rochester Hills, Mich.