Product Placement in Film & TV
A student in a first year marketing class I am TA’ing asked an interested question which I did some quick research on: what is the average price paid for product placement in the film industry?
While I wasn’t able to pinpoint an answer I did discover some interesting stuff:
- product placement as a whole was worth $4.24 billion (US) in 2005- 80% of which takes place on TV
- the top 3 TV shows by # of product placements
1. the biggest loser
2. american idol
3. extreme makeover
- Companies have been paying $5 million to have their product showcased on The Apprentice
- Studios often have larger, package deals with companies to have product placement in more than one movie, and even shared advertising agreements
- a 2006 article claimed the average indie movie (that ended up in theatres) was charging in the range of $50k to $250k
- a famous film example is E.T.- they charge Reese’s Pieces $1 million which supposedly resulted in an 80% leap in sales (for how long I wonder?)
- BMW paid $3 million to have James Bond dump his Aston Martin in a recent movie
- The recent hit Slumdog Millionaire (IMO) can be said to be an example of “product displacement”- they had to spend thousands removing any signs of the Mercedes brand from cars shown in the movie because Mercedes objected to their brand being seen in slums
Remember that movie The Wizard from back in the day? Now that was full on product placement.. the power glove.. super mario 3.. kids must be super vulnerable to that kind of stuff.