History of product placement in the cinema

When marketers study the origins of product placement, they generally think of the pioneering, often hesitant applications that were to be found in cinema more than a hundred years ago. Yet a more meticulous study of the history of communication quickly makes plain that well before the cinema, cabaret and actors of all genres used product placement for brands that also used them occasionally as advertising spokespersons. To cite only one famous example, before ever a camera had been cranked into action, Sarah Bernhardt appeared on stage wearing La Diaphane powder. Any reader who is a lover of impressionism will perhaps recall a famous motion picture by Édouard Manet, titled Bar at the Folies-Bergère in 1881. Passing over the placement of the brand name of the establishment in the title of the work, many people will undoubtedly have noticed the presence of numerous bottles on either side of the bar. On each side of the picture is a beer bottle, which, although shown in profile, bears a label whose shape and characteristic red triangle allow it to be identified as Bass beer [1, p.74]. It is useless for us to wonder whether the painter had found an extra source of income, or whether he simply aspired to a consummate realism, for which he is still credited today. In order to exist, a brand must be known: not necessarily by everyone, but in every event by those who are likely to buy its products. For this to occur, it must be placed in all the strategic locations that will enable it to connect with this potential audience. Owing to the mania that it soon stirred up, the cinema was quickly perceived as a vector of huge potential, and one to be prioritized.

A famous marketer Jay Newell’s research showes that certain films made by Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1896, at the request of François-Henri Lavanchy-Clarke, representative of Lever Brothers in France, represent the first cases of product placement on record. Others see these films as merely the first steps into advertising films [1, p.149].

The studios understood very early the advantages that could be gained from associating with brands. From the beginning of the 1910s, the famous Model T Fords were frequently found in the credits of Mack Sennett comedies [2, p.34]. At the beginning, it was not necessarily a matter of placement of the brand’s name, but of its products. This was for the simple and very good reason that it was not about making the advertisers pay, but above all benefiting from accessories, vehicles, services for free, the quid pro quo being that they are allowed to appear onscreen. In his autobiography, the director Robert Parrish tells of the choice of automobile brands dictated by the producer because of a contract with a car maker.

The famous historian Kerry Segrave recounts how at the same time,brands made short ads, generally only one reel long, dedicated to their products, in order to offer them to cinema operators under advantageous conditions. In 1931, Variety observed that more than 50 per cent of cinemas showed advertising programmes. At the dawn of the talkies, towards the end of the 1920s, the phenomenon was so remarkable that the cinema had become the place of entertainment. The brands even organized factual communications operations in cinema lobbies. However, advertising films, as well as the commercial direction of cinemas, eventually succumbed to their opponents. In contrast, placement in films resisted opposition and evolved. Cinema is a captive medium for its audience and therefore particularly interesting to advertisers.

The whole history of cinema is marked by representative examples. In 1916, the Universal studio produced a silent film with the explicit title, She Wanted a Ford. In 1929, Alfred Hitchcock subtly used a luminous sign for Gordon’s gin, in order to dramatize the dark thoughts of the murderess Alice White, played by Anny Ondra in Blackmail [3, p.132].

The interpretative and evocative power of the cinema also allows it to take a great many creative liberties. Although she had never smoked a cigarette in her entire life as a comic character, in Superman II (Richard Lester, 1980) the character of Lois Lane conspicuously smokes Marlboros. The brand admitted to having paid the sum of US$42,000 for 22 placements throughout the film. In one of the film’s fight scenes, Superman was even thrown into the side of a truck in the brand’s colours, situated in mid-screen. Bearing in mind the target audience for this film, the association with the heroic world of Superman was very important for the advertiser in order to relegitimate the consumption of its product [3, p.112].

All of these examples illustrate how placements have always been present in films, but for reasons that are sometimes very different, as we will examine. They confirm, in fact, that there is no one placement, but multiple possibilities for stage direction, satisfying different objectives.