Series and television programmes

In England, in television series, until the progressive relaxing of the rules, the non-prohibited placements concerned props that were absolutely indispensable to the plot, cars and institutions such as towns or regions. In the United States, a much more permissive practice, particularly on cable channels, has for a long time permitted all types of placement. The detectives of Hawaii Five-O never drove anything but Ford cars. The Microsoft Xbox is played with exclusively in Two and a Half Men. People eat Oreo cookies and use their American Express cards in Friends. Nokia mobile phones are often present in the series Alias, as are Alienware computers in Smallville, the imposing Hummer vehicles in CSI: Miami.

Television series are increasingly courted by advertisers. There are many reasons for this. In the United States, the series produced by the cable channels in recent years have been able to profoundly revive the genre, with their more liberal tone and their more original subjects. As the result, they attract a large audience, all the more so since they have fewer commercial breaks than series on the major networks. Furthermore, an episode of a series lasts on average only 42 minutes, and this shorter format is suitable for the seduction of the modern consumer, who is always in a hurry and does not necessarily have the time to dedicate 90–120 minutes to a feature film. In addition, some of the series enjoy production budgets comparable to film budgets, and can therefore retain a high quality, so are likely to retain their audience from episode to episode, over several seasons. The use of recurring characters is the distinctive feature of a series in general. It is also, however, a certain advantage for product and brand placements. This not only acts as an aid to consumer memorization, it also enables brands to instil over time a certain proximity, even a certain familiarity between the character and the audience. The brand discourse can thus enjoy a very positive implicit testimonial, either direct or indirect.

The impact of the placement and the prescriptive effect of the characters of a series can be genuinely powerful. In 2004, an imaginary product was placed in the soap opera All My Children, shown on ABC since 1970. The brand in question was Fusion, a fictional perfume and clothing brand, used in the plot of several episodes and praised by the characters of the series: it was subsequently actually sold in shops and on the television channel’s website. Finally, unlike a film, a television series offers the considerable advantage of being able to identify its audience with some precision, and therefore to know what sector of the public it is managing to attract. For any advertiser, this is essential: this is how it knows whether the audience matches its target.

Placement in a television series is, however, not without its risks. Here, too, it is important to be vigilant over the details of the placement contract over time. The intensifying competition means that television channels are now particularly quick to shift a series to another time slot, or even to cancel it if the audience figures are not as expected. What, therefore, are the implications for the advertiser, whose communication strategy may find itself somewhat altered by the decision? Placement should also be practiced with caution by the television channels, particularly when they are also producers, so as not to accentuate the very thing – commercialism – the editorial content is supposed to enable viewers to avoid. In fact, the too-obvious presence of one advertiser in a given series can rapidly lead all other competing advertisers to shun the associated commercial breaks, and thereby accelerate the channel’s loss of revenues.

In a television programme, testimonials in favour of a product or brand are of two types, both of which should be taken into consideration since the methods of placement, or simply of the appearance of the brand, differ according to type. Some programmes call on stars, others on unknowns invited or selected to participate in the programme. With the use of stars, the association gives the brand the advantage of being able to profit directly or indirectly from their celebrity. Furthermore, as in most cases the stars are showbusiness professionals, their professionalism can be capitalized on, to promote the product in favourable conditions.

If an unknown is used, this professional approach is not always possible. Some training will often be necessary, if the production and the advertiser wish the brand’s integration into the programme to appear as natural as possible. If the placement is successfully carried out, however, the fact that an anonymous consumer is used is not necessarily a drawback. The remuneration stars demand for their testimonial is well-known to everyone, which can in certain cases affect their credibility. When an average consumer is used, and rarely paid because participation in the programme is reward enough, the impact may be infinitely greater among another part of the marketing target audience, if the product or brand placement is well orchestrated, or by the fact of the consumer’s natural credibility. Care should be taken, however, since the public are increasingly mature and it is not a question of duping them. Hence, clearly, the impulse for thinking integration and not simply placement.

Others still sometimes use the term stealth marketing to describe these placements. They are committing two flagrant errors. The first is that if it were a matter of stealth marketing, the competent authorities would not be capable of decoding the placements, and this would not necessarily profit the brands. The second is that the public itself would have to be incredibly naive to see it as coincidence after coincidence that products turn up on certain programmes. In countries with more rigorous legislation on the subject of stealth marketing, such as France in comparison with the United States, authorities such as the Higher Audiovisual Council are quick to act and to impose a punishment if the brand has not been blurred, or disguised by digital interference