Can Indie Producers Afford A Product Placement Agency Or Specialist? By Ian McQueen

The last thing an Indie production needs to here is that there is another "expense" related to their project. As it is, discretionary funds are usually hard to come by for the Indie producer. In reality though, the question really should be How Can Indie Productions Not Afford To Hire A Product Placement Agency Or Specialist?

Plain and simple, Indie productions need product placement and brand integration deals more than the major studios do. Sure, hundred of thousands of dollars are saved via brand integration when the likes of Sony Pictures Entertainment and 20th Century Fox produce tent-pole films such as The Green Hornet and The A Team. Big ticket items such as cars, jets and computer gear add up quickly. But stop and think for a minute, with budgets running 100 million plus, are these integrations deal breakers?! Absolutely not! At the end of the day, production continues with or without these deals.

For Indie productions, saving anywhere 35k to 150k significantly impacts the production budget. Hiring an agency or specialist to handle brand integration and product placement should become part of the budget instead of an afterthought, as it will always pay for itself and more. Now when I say specialist, I don't mean using someone from the art department to make some calls and hope for the best. If an agency is not retained to handle entertainment marketing, a full time production staffer whose ONLY job is to procure brand partnerships should be hired.

So the question really comes down to an agency or production representative, what do you think?