Why the ad wizards came up with this one

Advertising is everywhere and we can get overwhelmed by how much is out there. As a result, we may actively seek to avoid them. But when we watch movies, we don't often realize it can be directly embedded into what we're enjoying and even paying for. Of course, this isn't anything new and has been in practice for decades. It's now a growing multi-billion dollar industry that leverages a few fundamental concepts in its quest for your eyeballs.

  1. A Captive (and Receptive) Audience

    Unlike traditional advertising, we can’t skip these kinds of advertisements and we're in a relaxed and susceptible state (for the most part).


  2. Part of the Story

    Featured brands can be part of the storyline and given premium emphasis by progressing the plot or even as their own characters. Like our friend, Wilson.

  3. Lending Credibility

    Products can not only be shown but used by movie stars. This interaction can range from subtle nods to close-up usage of the product, implying trust and an assocation. Even background cameos help.

Continue

So what's actually in movies?

More than you might think. For instance, one issue is duration. How long are products seen onscreen and in what ways — what factors expose us to which brands the most and by what categories?

Which movies are essentially overproduced infomercials? Which movie stars are the biggest sell-outs and by what measure? And come to think of it, how much of it is presented close-up versus discreet or in the background?

Let's break product placement down into what kinds of categories and brands make up a typical movie-going experience.

Continue

What the data tells us

With a dataset of the top 10 domestically grossing movies from 2003-2013 containing every single observed product placement, all of that and more can be addressed. Check out the list below for the categories that make up our entire set of data.

  • Clothing, Footwear & Accessories
  • Electronics
  • Entertainment
  • Establishment
  • Food & Drink
  • Home
  • Organization
  • Personal Brand
  • Smoking
  • Sports Equipment
  • Vehicle

We can see how these categories and their onscreen durations are split by a variety of characteristics...

Cars are a big deal

Vehicles is the dominant category among all movies with nearly eight hours versus clothing with nearly five. Though movies focusing primarily on car-related themes like the Cars, Transformers, and Fast & Furious franchises could be seen as skewing the data.

However, even with those movies removed from the dataset, vehicles are still the top category but only by a minute ahead of clothing.

Action is where it's at

Action movies contain the biggest amount of product placement screentime, with over seven hours of promotional material compared to comedy in next place with only three hours.

Although adventure has more market share than action during this period, action movies outnumber adventure in the data by 3 to 1.

Celebrity power not so powerful

You might assume that brand association with popular actors would be a more preferable way to present a product.

Yet what we see here is that most time spent in product placements are either not associated (N/A) with anyone at all, or actually seen with on-set extras who have no particular celebrity status.

#ProductsSoWhite

It's not so surprising that most product placements by screentime occur with White actors.

But what struck me is that second and third place go to either no one at all (n/a) or people who weren't noticeable enough to be identifed (Unknown) — both before any other ethnicity makes the list.

Gender Gap

It's a similar story here as in Ethnicity. Males make up the biggest portion while no association at all (n/a) comes before Females.

In other words, this could imply that if Hollywood can't get a Male star to associate with a product, it might prefer those products stand alone than have Female stars associate with them.

How in-your-face is it?

In terms of how much an onscreen product is visible, Hollywood appears to agree with Wayne Campbell's point that making it too heavy-handed might be a mistake.

Visibility at a "subtle" distance is right in the middle of the range. However, it can be more than the word implies. It includes products at the forefront of a scene but not quite hitting you over the head, which means it's still quite noticeable.

Clothes maketh the kid

This view looks at the data split up by typical age brackets used in the marketing industry.

The thing that jumped out at me the most is that kids and young adults between 1 and 24 are promoting clothing by a particularly large margin. Hollywood really wants to dress your kids up.

So what's actually in these categories?

We can go beyond categories and see how they break down by brand. A few interesting things popped out.

  • The top few brands in Food & Drink are beer brands, with Budwiser as #1 both here and in Advertising.
  • Glasses/Sunglasses are a huge part of the Clothing category.
  • Bill O'Reilly gets more exposure than I might have assumed.
  • Many of the top brands in Entertainment are ones directly associated with Toy Story 3 for good reason.
  • The camera loves Apple.

Loading Data…
0%

An Even Deeper Dive

Action movies contain an overwhelming majority of placements and Iron Man (2008) is a notable example having kicked off what we now know as the Marvel Cinematic Universe — the largest movie franchise ever. However, it was unclear at the time that such an endeavor would work out.

With its $75 million marketing budget, some felt it was ad overexposure to the point of almost boycotting its sponsors while others thought marketing fast food kids meal toys to children as young as three for a PG-13 movie was going too far and campaigned to put a stop to it. Although Iron Man Slurpees didn't seem to appear on their radar.

Let's dig deeper to not only see what makes up the movie but also how visibly it's presented to us and precisely when it happens.

Continue

Iron Man: Product Placement Cut

As a representative film in the data, Iron Man has a set of featured brands with a variety of screen times and visibility strengths. What would it be like to watch the movie completely through the lens of product placement? A version of the movie where any instance of a brand being shown onscreen in any capacity can shed some light on how much the film relies on marketing.

Navigate through the movie by ten-minute segments and hover on bars representing category and visibility strength to see how it all breaks down and at what points. Have it your way.

Caveat Emptor

So does this mean if you see The Rock wearing Ray-Ban aviators, drinking a Pepsi, ordering a Domino's Pizza on his iPhone hooked up to a Plantronics bluetooth headset while driving a BMW you'll want to go out and buy every single one of those things? Not exactly, but you might not have given any of those products a second thought if you hadn't seen a celebrity you like implicitly endorsing those brands.

There are research studies showing the effectiveness of product placement while others have cited only a marginal increase in brand recall. However, it's generally agreed that it helps further brand awareness that would otherwise be avoided.

It's a film industry staple, helping pad budgets and cross-promotional tie-ins get the word out. For companies, there are numerous examples where it's paid off, translating consumer awareness to actual financial success.

One thing's for certain: it works.