Product placement a booming business

INNOVATION:American companies spent €3 billion on TV placement this year, a 30 per cent increase on 2006, writes Richard Gillis.

If you are ever in the position of needing to transfer photos of yourself via mobile phone to a couple of dangerous, blood-thirsty hitmen, it's best to use a Motorola Razr 2. This recommendation comes courtesy of Jason Bourne, alias Matt Damon, who demonstrates the phone's capability in the hit film, The Bourne Ultimatum.

Or, like George Clooney and Brad Pitt, you may choose Stella Artois as your lager of choice when planning your next heist.

Some filmgoers will be grateful for the advice. However, the rise of product placement on film and in television is troubling the people who write the scripts, who are rebelling against what they see as the growing influence of advertisers in their work.

They have chosen to use satire to highlight a serious question: who has creative control in American television?

A viral and media campaign is being waged by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) West, which represents writers of entertainment and news programmes in America, and the Screen Actors Guild, the trade union for on screen talent.

Patric Verronne, president of WGA West, says writers and editors find it difficult to say no to big advertisers who demand their brand is fitted into the wrong type of space in a manipulated fashion.

"The writers blanche at the prospect of having to shoehorn a mention into the script. It has to be done lovingly and has to fit with the story or the characters . . . we don't want Colombo driving a Maserati."

An example from the ABC soap opera All My Children, offers an insight in to the daily job of today's TV screenwriters. Having worked for days on an emotional hospital scene, at the last minute writers were told that the network had made a product placement deal with Wal-Mart to plug a new perfume. With production wrapping up, the scene was hastily re-written - the emotionally distraught wife took a moment to talk about the Wal-Mart scent on the way to the bedside of her comatose husband.

The campaign by the WGA does not attempt to stem the growth of product placement as a marketing tool, says Verronne. Rather, he wants writers and actors to have a greater say in the way in which it is executed, and for his members to be paid for their work. "Television is an advertising-based business. We are not trying to stop the process but we are trying to make it better," he says.

The WGA West recently staged a protest outside a conference on product placement organised by Advertising Age, the US trade publication; an event to which the writers and actors were not allowed to attend or even to buy a ticket. "They have chosen to remain silent," says Verronne.

This "non-debate" is being played out against a backdrop of surging interest in the use of product placement by advertisers in the US. Research consultants PQ Media estimate that American companies spent $4.3 billion (€3 billion) on TV placement this year, a 30 per cent increase on 2006 figures. This makes it the fastest growing marketing medium in the country, with the US representing nearly two-thirds of global spend.

In May this year, EC rules were relaxed, suggesting a similar boom is about to take hold on this side of the Atlantic.

Recently, chairman of the CBS television network Les Moonves predicted that up to 75 per cent of all scripted prime-time network shows will soon feature products paid for by advertisers and integrated into plot lines.

One of the most contentious issues surrounding the use of placement is disclosure; ensuring the audience is aware that they are being exposed to advertising messages.

"In the credits there is a reference in tiny print at the end of the show," says Verronne. "We intend to try to pressure the legislators to beef up the rules and introduce a new code of conduct."

Other writing pressure groups have expressed similar concerns. "My greatest concerns for writers are whether this will this distort the way TV programmes are conceived and written?" says Lester George, chairman of the Writers Guild of Great Britain. "Would they veto a gay kiss, or insist that creationism be seen as equally plausible as Darwinism?"

For the medium of product placement however, the future will see greater interaction between producer and viewer, with orders being placed for products during the screening of a film or programme. When Matt Damon pulls out his Motorola, viewers will be ready to buy it before he puts it back in his pocket.