"Building & Protecting Brands Through Entertainment Marketing"

Friday, October 22, 2010

How Much Does Product Placement Cost? By Ian McQueen

When it comes to Product Placement, "How Much Does It Cost" is never a simple answer. In fact, I'm not sure what I was thinking (or wasn't thinking) when I decided to write this blog. There are numerous factors that play a role in the cost of placing your products in movies and television shows. How exactly is your brand going to be featured? Is there an opportunity to leverage the entertainment property through a co-branded cross promotion, social media and/or PR? Are your products being donated or loaned, and what is the net cost to you?

First, let's discuss television shows. There are a couple different avenues available for in-show product placement. Working directly with Propmasters, Set Decorators, Costumer Designers and/or Producers is one option. This allows you to put your product in the hands of key production representatives. With these types of placements, money doesn't change hands. In fact, it is illegal for crew members to accept cash-it's called "Payola." The drawback to this is that there is no hard and fast rule from show to show, some will allow product placement with crew members and some won't. That brings me to the next option, securing placement through an "ad buy" on a television show. The shows that "don't allow" product placement through key department heads usually allow for deals where product placement (also referred to as "brand integration") is part of a larger media buy. This of course defeats the purpose of utilizing product placement as an inexpensive way of reaching millions of consumers.

Movies are somewhat similar, although the major studios have designated groups who handle both product placement and cross promotions. You can also work directly with crew members as with television shows. Again, crew members are not allowed to accept payments for placement; However, production companies, studio product placement/promotion departments and producers can accept payment for product placement. When working with productions that will be distributed by studios such as Warner Bros. or Disney, you should definitely work through the "Production Resources" and/or "Promotion" departments to facilitate product placement. On an indie film, product placement is usually handled by a designated crew member (art department coordinator, production coordinator-sometimes even one of the producers) or an independent product placement representative.

So what does it cost?! If you plan on making product placement an integral part of your marketing plan, you should seriously consider hiring an agency or having a dedicated in-house marketing representative. As far as paying fees to studios, producers, production companies, etc., I strongly recommend you don't. Your best bet if a fee is being required is to negotiate a deal to waive the fee in lieu of a comprehensive cross promotion program. So your cost for a yearly targeted product placement marketing program will usually run between 30k to 50k per year utilizing an agency. An experienced (10+ years in the industry) in-house representative will be 130k+.

Still have questions? You definitely should!

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