The $1.5 million Donald Trump Engagement Ring, the Car that Jack Bauer Drives on 24, and the Camera Lingering on the Coffee Can In the Friends Kitchen All Have One Thing in Common. Clue: Money Changed Hands!
Philip Stone February 17, 2005
They say one reason the rich get richer is because they know a good deal when its offered. So how about a 15-carat $1.5 million diamond engagement ring at half price? Not exactly romantic, but how could Donald Trump possibly say no, and as for his wife, well, she does have a $1.5 million ring! All Trump had to do was to make sure there were plenty of pictures of the ring on his fiancé’s (now wife’s) finger, and with every available breath in every possible interview tell everyone the ring came from the upscale jewelers, Graf.
 Look at those smiles. She got the $1.5m ring. He saved $750.000.And is it any accident that in the Fox produced "24" television series all the good guys get to drive various models of Ford cars? Ford paid big-time to ensure its products were driven in the show. It has now opened a Hollywood showroom for producers to come by and see which cars they would like to feature in their upcoming projects.
And now product placement – the hottest thing to hit the advertising world since, well, product placement, is being taken to new extremes.
Warner Brothers has signed deals with two companies to insert products digitally into shows that were filmed long ago and are now in syndication around the world.
It goes by the name “digital branded integration”. What it means to you and me is that when, for instance, we watch Monica in Friends cooking in the kitchen and if during the original filming the camera remained rooted to one view for at least six seconds of say, the kitchen counter, then new products are going to turn up in syndication on that counter that weren’t there when the show was originally filmed.
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If Leonardo Da Vinci had intended for his 15th century “Last Supper” fresco to display glamorous models in chic clothing then he would have painted it that way. Right?
If the television program or movie comes out of NBC Universal, or appears on NBC television, then expect within the year to find plenty of Volkswagens...
EU Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne told the World Advertising Federation that self-regulation is a good idea and he expected the industry to rise to the challenge.
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And the British stage is going one step further and for one night in March live ads are going to be acted out on stage between scenes by the cast of Saturday Night Fever for such companies as McDonalds, Kellogg’s and Heinz. Even the words to some of the songs are being changed to plug the products.
The tickets for that night are being sold for charity, but there is more than a passing interest to see how the audience reacts.
Product placement is not new to Hollywood. When producers try to line up financing for their projects one of their first calls are on companies offering deals to show their products within the film. The cola can on the kitchen counter, the cars the stars drive, the planes they take, the make-up they use, the clothes they wear – all with the brand clearly in the camera’s site.
Volkswagen and NBC Universal recently announced a deal worth some $200 million for Volkswagen cars to appear in television shows and movies, plus to be used at gala events such as movie opening nights.
And the advertising world just got a big win from the Bush Administration when the Federal Trade Commission denied a petition filed by Ralph Nader’s Commercial Alert asking that every time a prearranged product placement occurs on television a pop-up would notify the viewer it was an advertisement.
How prevalent is product placement becoming? CBS chairman Les Moonves predicts that within four years about three-quarters of all US scripted programs will have embedded advertising.
Why? Because you and I go 10x past the advertising when we watch shows we have recorded. The advertiser has paid big money to flog his product and we have the audacity to filter the ads out – some statistics report that more than 90% of ads are filtered out by viewers if they have they have the means. So instead of having advertising as an insert to programming which can easily be edited out, the next logical step was to have advertising within the product that could not be edited out.
And there are those in the advertising world who predict that it wont take too long before it will be commonplace for convergence between the programs seen on television and being able to buy products seen on those programs via the internet.
Don’t’ believe it? NBC is already doing that with two of its shows in the US.
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