CHAPTER14 Advertising: the Art of Attracting an Audience

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CHAPTER14 Advertising: The Art of Attracting an Audience

Reading Skills: Product Placement

DIRECTIONS: Perhaps you’ve noticed a character in a movie use a familiar brand-name product or seen one lying around in the background of a shot. This is a method of advertising companies use called “product placement.” The article below describes one company’s successful venture into movie product placement. Read the article, then answer the questions that follow.

Fans of Robert Redford’s film The Horse Whisperer may gush over the breathtaking vistas of Montana or Redford’s romantic scenes. But for John Marriott, the high point comes when the camera lingers on a computer screen, starting a 30-second sequence featuring his company’s Web site, “Part of the reason we bought the company was the tremendous exposure it was going to get in this movie,” says Marriott, who became president and co-owner of EquiSearch.com LLC, a five-person Londonderry (N.H.) business, last December.

That half-minute of make-believe is making a real difference for EquiSearch, which lists horses, equipment, and farms for sale worldwide and provides all sorts of information for equestrians. Not only is traffic on the site up about 40 percent since early May but ad revenues jumped over 400 percent from March to April alone, sparked by the movie connection. (It doesn’t hurt that the movie’s official Web site offers a link to EquiSearch’s site.)

Talk about star power. As EquiSearch has seen, product placement—getting a business or product into the plot or onto the set of a movie or TV show—can help catapult a company out of obscurity. “You can’t get any more powerful exposure—except maybe word from a friend who swears by a product,” says Robert J. Thomas, a marketing professor at Georgetown University in Washington.

Ever since that lovable alien E.T. gobbled up Reese’s Pieces in 1982, big consumer-products companies have included placement in their marketing arsenal. While they sometimes pay six figures for choice spots, small companies on shoestring budgets can play, too. How is that possible? Your product or business might lend local color or fill a specific need. If you’ve any doubt whether that’s valuable publicity, consider how Seinfeld turned small businesses such as Love Discount Stores, H&H Bagels, and Tom’s Restaurant into stars.

For months, EquiSearch founder Kristine Griscom had heard buzz about The Horse Whisperer in equestrian circles and learned through a friend that Touchstone Pictures needed an equine consultant on the set. Griscom—who has since sold her stake in EquiSearch and is its director of site development—eagerly became its adviser. Later, when Touchstone decided its female protagonist should go online and read about the horse trainer (Redford) on the Web, Griscom offered equisearch.com, providing for free the fictional content and graphics. Altogether, says Griscom: “I’ve spent more than a hundred hours on this, but it’s absolutely worth it.”

Adapted from Dale Buss, “You Ought to Be in Pictures,” BusinessWeek, 22 June 1998.

What happened to EquiSearch’s business after the thirty-second shot of their Web site in
The Horse Whisperer?
The article mentioned that “ad revenues” jumped. What does this mean?
What was a major factor in John Marriott’s decision to buy EquiSearch?
Which film mentioned in this article could be considered a “product placement milestone?”
Why is it considered a milestone?
How might small businesses get some of this big-money product placement publicity?
How did Kristine Griscom profit from spending 100 hours providing free content and graphics for that one shot in The Horse Whisperer?

Product Placement Examples

Do you know which TV show or movie had the following product placements? Try to guess; DO NOT look on the Internet.

Junior mints -
Snapple -
Wheat Thins, Doritos, Fruit Rollups -
Reebok -
Staples -
Pizza Hut, Doritos, Nuprin, Pepsi, Reebok -
Slinky, Etch-a-Sketch, Mr. Potato Head-
Kodak, 7-Eleven, Krispy Kreme, Coca-Cola, Motorola, Puma, Evian, TJMaxx, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Target, Sega, McDonalds -
Mini Cooper-
FedEx, Wilson -
Rolex, BMW, Aston Martin -
Ray Ban, U.S. Navy -
Reese’s Pieces -
Nike, Pepsi, Delorean Motor Company -