An Academy Award-Winning Marketing Strategy: Go for the Product Placement

By now, nearly everyone who’s attuned to popular culture, or visits a coffeehouse or watercooler frequented by those who are, has probably heard the Oscars chatter about host Ellen DeGeneres’ stunt taking self-portraits with A-list stars from their seats in Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre. The phone Ellen used for the snapshots (called “selfies,” for the uninitiated) and for a gag in which she ordered a pizza delivery to a bemused audience, was a Samsung Galaxy, its logo clearly visible on any decent-sized TV screen.

And so went the newest high-profile case of product placement, a marketing strategy where a product is integrated into some form of audiovisual communication – usually a movie or TV show. Certainly, the 2014 Academy Awards, a TV broadcast honoring the movie industry, would be nominated were there a prize for “Best Vehicle for Placement.” Only the Super Bowl might edge out the Hollywood lovefest. So, it’s no big surprise Samsung was at one point during the night averaging 900 mentions a minute on social media.

Those who came of age in the early 1980s may remember the Steven Spielberg classic “E.T.” Nearly as popular an image as Elliott riding his bike against a moonlit sky, extraterrestrial BFF in tow, was that of ET and our young hero connecting over a handful of Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces. Among other things, the film put the bite-sized candies on the map, and put M&M maker Mars, Inc. atop the list of bad corporate decision-makers for its choice not to fork over advertising dollars for the plug. The gamble was probably based on uncertainty about the film’s commercial appeal. But in retrospect, to tweak the old idiom, Mars should have put its money where its customers’ mouths were.

The value of embedded marketing, where the point is to have the brand sneak into the viewer’s consciousness rather than via direct ads, cannot be overstated. This is especially true with most TV programming, as DVRs make ad-skipping more commonplace. But even with a live event like the Oscars, Samsung gained a lot more traction with its product placement than its conventional ads aired that same night.

Around those Reese’s Pieces, an entire generation may have grown up accustomed to seeing commercial products embedded in audiovisual entertainment. (And, the candy examples abound: “Seinfeld”’s Kramer and his Junior Mints, anyone?). Actually, product placement goes further back than many people realize. In fact, recent scholarship has shown it dates back to the earliest days of cinema.

It’s not limited to products, per se – services are fair game, too. For example, social media needn’t be just an indicator of advertising success. Platforms themselves can be marketed this way. Ellen’s selfie was an even bigger windfall for Twitter than it was for Samsung. When she tweeted that image, her stated goal was to produce the most retweeted photo ever. It worked. By noon the following day, the shot had been retweeted more than 2.7 million times, beating the previous record set by President Obama after his re-election in 2012. That photo of Obama hugging wife Michelle? Retweeted a mere 781,000-plus times. If tweeting hadn’t already become a verb in its own right, the Oscars buzz would have socialized it into the lexicon.

In the 1950s, TV’s infancy, media scholar Marshall McLuhan’s famous book “The Medium Is the Massage” theorized that under the influence of mass media, we unconsciously relax, and tend to believe every message we receive without giving it a second thought. Half a century later, people may have gotten more cynical, but the media has also become more complex, and opportunities for visual marketing have expanded hugely. Companies that don’t take advantage could be missing out.