As seen on screen: Whatever next for product placement?
McDonald's on the evening news? Iron Man driving an Audi? Whatever next for product placement? By John Walsh
Rupert Murdoch's Fox network has struck a deal with McDonald's, which has bought the right to have two cups of their branded frappuccino appear on the desk in front of the anchors on Fox 5 News Credit: Tim Boyle/Getty Images
Thursday July 24 2008
It hasn't happened yet – but it surely will. Product placement – in which a company pays a film studio or broadcast network for the right to have its product appear, apparently by chance, on screen in a movie or television show – has reached the hallowed territory of news. In the US, Rupert Murdoch's Fox network has struck a deal with McDonald's, which has bought the right to have two cups of their branded frappuccino appear on the desk in front of the anchors on Fox 5 News.
It's a six-month promotion. While broadcasting, the presenters, Jason Feinberg and Monica Jackson, look a little sheepish about the obviousness of the commercial plug before them – and they never take a drink, because the cups don't contain actual coffee but an ersatz beverage with bogus, non-melting ice cubes.
Other television outlets, from Seattle to Manhattan, have followed the Murdoch initiative and will display McDonald's products, according to The New York Times. Should we be on stand-by for the first cheeseburger Happy Meal to appear on the USA map (just beside Florida) during a CNN weather forecast?
It's the result of the fall in advertising revenues in the US. Audiences, however, have been softened up to accept it by product placement in the movies. Remember the multiple mentions (and viewings) of Starbucks in The Devil Wears Prada? Did you wonder why all the characters in Casino Royale used Vaio laptops? And then there's the scene in Behind Enemy Lines when Owen Wilson, on the run in war-torn Bosnia, finds a truck-load of young soldiers. He tells them he is thirsty; one cool Bosnian reaches into his rucksack and offers a Coca-Cola. Taking a swig, Wilson holds it up and says, "That is good. Thank you." Did audiences think: "Hang on, that's a bit of a plug"? Equally, in I, Robot, when someone compliments Will Smith on his trainers and he replies, "Converse, vintage 2004", did audiences think: "This is an advert!"
It's a lucrative business, of course. Steven Spielberg reportedly recouped some of the cost of making The Terminal, about an immigrant forced to live in JFK airport, by including footage of real-life retail outlets. And no less a superhero than Iron Man is currently screeching across the silver screen in an Audi R8 – and co-starring with the mean machine in the film's print adverts, too.
But on-screen plugs have been working their subliminal magic for years. Remember Frank Capra's 1946 movie, It's a Wonderful Life? When George Bailey dreams of the future he thinks he'll spend designing bridges in foreign lands, he's shown ostentatiously flicking through National Geographic magazine.
Sixty years later, you can find brands embedded in the plot: in one episode of Sex and the City, the marketing of Absolut Vodka is part of the narrative. Whole films can seem like commercials: Castaway, with Tom Hanks, could have been a 90-minute plug for FedEx. In There's Something about Mary, the Dodge Durango driven by Mary (Cameron Diaz) is caressed by the camera as lovingly as Ms D. But then you seldom see a car in a movie whose on-screen presence hasn't been paid for by the manufacturers.
But what's the powder-blue sports car that Andrew Marr is seen driving over Westminster Bridge at the start of his Sunday show? A Nissan Figaro. Did Nissan pay the BBC for the plug? Once you start looking for product placement (no matter how innocent, as here), you see it everywhere. Almost as much as the viewers of Fox 5 News.
