Product Placement – Some Good, Some Not

A few months ago I listened to the How Stuff Works podcast on product placement.  If you’ve never listened to this podcast series, you really should.  The back and forth banter reminds me of Drew Remenda and Randy Hanh, the sportscasters for the San Jose Sharks games.  Product placement, when done appropriately, is amazingly effective, I believe that it is more effective than commercials, as the subtlety adds a nice dimension to the ad.  A lot of people are turned off by commercials.  TV commercials are getting louder so that you can still hear them aired when you walk away to grab another Coke.  So now the routine is: commercials, mute, walk away, grab Coke, etc, back in time, unmute.  Or, with DVRs so popular now (50% of consumers by 2010 — that’s now! )you pause the show and fast forward to the commercials.

Content is now being streamed via the Internet more and more to the consumer.  This means increasingly less people will see the commercials aired on TV.  Ads on the webpages are okay, but a lot of browsers can block ads.  Plus, people who pirate TV shows wont see any ads either.

Product placement – ads built into the content – is one of the most promising avenues for advertisers now.  You can’t skip it, you can’t mute it, you can’t walk away (you could do all these, but you’d miss part of the show, and no one wants that!).  It’s subtle, sneaky, and effective.  Oh look! Jack Bauer drives a Ford? I need a Ford! Then I’ll be awesome and save the world every day like him!

Subtle

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