PRODUCT PLACEMENT
The Art And Science Of
Product Placement
By Albert Josiah
I
f I asked you what your favourite film
is, you might quickly be able to recall
the title. The products that were snuck
past your subconscious mind, though, may
not be quite so easy to recall. That is not
to say that you don’t recall it. The brand
image lingers on, somewhere in the back of
your mind, where the odd inclination to be
drawn to ‘this one’ and not ‘that one’ resides.
Placing brand material in a film, whether it
is the product, or just the brand name, or an
entire diatribe extolling the virtues of the
product, is not a recent development. It’s
been present since the 1920’s. According to
Daniel Bukszpan in a special for CNBC.
com posted on 3rd June 2011: “The first
movie ever to win a Best Picture Oscar
was a silent 1927 film called ‘Wings’,
which featured Clara Bow, Gary Cooper
and, in one scene, a prominently placed
bar of Hershey’s chocolate.”
In a world that is saturated with images
and user generated content, product
placement can offer your brand a way to
cut across the noise and speak directly to
your customer. The cinema screen provides
a unique opportunity for a receptive
audience of potential customers to see your
Product Placement can be described in a
lot of ways, but ‘one size fits all’ doesn't
fit. While it is a very flexible medium, it
is slightly more complicated than sliding a
box of your product in the back of every
shot. Think of product placement like a
fine scalpel. It allows you to express the
subtle nuance of your brand by dictating
the ‘context’ within which it is seen. That’s
why product placement is so popular with
luxury brands, and they will pay top dol-
lar for placement in the ‘right’ movie with
the ‘right’ star.
46 MAL28/19 ISSUE
brand in a positive light, without making
it obvious that it is a commercial.
The film in which your product is
featured has already done the job of
filtering the audience for you. Films are
targeted at a specific demographic, so if
that demographic also happens to be the
demographic you are gunning for, that
would be a hat trick: Your brand, shown
in a positive light; To your products’
demographic; In an unobtrusive way.
What’s not to like?
A film isn’t just a 2 dimensional image
projected on a screen. It is a potential
user experience waiting to happen. Sony
Xperia staged an experience during
the opening weekend of SKyfall in
Stockholm, Sweden. Movie goers were
treated to a plastic cup of soda branded
Sony as they entered the theatre.
Through a combination of planning and
staging, a phone was planted inside one
of the sodas, and it rang. The person who
had the soda with the phone in it won a
new phone.
If you look away from the obvious hype
of giving away a new phone in such an
unexpected way, you will see the brand
values that Sony puts across to the
audience quite effortlessly.
In one fell swoop, Sony told the audience
that the Xperia is waterproof and
will wipe clean easily, and got a bonus
connection to a very cool brand: James
Bond. I highly recommend looking for it:
it is on YouTube. It’s called “The Xperia
Soda Stunt”. It is a class in effortless. licence. The brand must cede power to the
film. That is a difficult decision for any
brand manager. But worth every cent!
In a world where disruptive advertising
is viewed as a plague on privacy, and no-
one wants to be ‘sold’ to, “The Xperia
Soda Stunt” efficiently bypasses all the
usual barriers conventional advertising is
struggling with. The Right Ingredients
Product Placement can be described in a
lot of ways, but ‘one size fits all’ doesn't
fit. While it is a very flexible medium, it
is slightly more complicated than sliding
a box of your product in the back of every
shot. Think of product placement like a
fine scalpel. It allows you to express the
subtle nuance of your brand by dictating
the ‘context’ within which it is seen. That’s
why product placement is so popular with
luxury brands, and they will pay top dollar
for placement in the ‘right’ movie with
the ‘right’ star.
The relationship between product
placement and the filmmaker is
bittersweet. Purists will say that product
placement is selling your artistic soul to
the corporate devil. I think it’s starving
artists making hungry art, and nobody
really likes hungry art.
There is, undoubtedly, an artistic price to
pay for having that product in your film,
and the big bucks that come with it. The
brand may want to exercise some control
over what else goes into a film that their
brand is in, and with good reason. You
may have to include morality clauses in
your actor release forms to ensure that
your actors act in a way that ‘befits’ the
brand in your film. Small price to pay for
the kind of financing it takes to make
a great film. After all: he who pays the
piper dictates the tune.
That having been said, it can have a
detrimental effect. The ‘client’, so to
speak, exercising censorship over the very
medium that they want to use to rub some
‘cool’ on their brand is self-defeatist. It is
a swahili saying: “Pema ukipema si pema
tena”. It is a tightrope balancing between
your brand ethos and the creative freedom
that forges a great film.
The best value for money, when it comes
to product placement, is a film that is
going to travel on its own merit. The spark
exists when the filmmaker has a creative
As with most things, there is a sweet
spot when you combine just the right
ingredients. The balance between creative
license and brand exposure is struck by
looking for a film and filmmaker whose
vision can be married to your brand
without a fuss. It’s harder than it sounds,
but it’s not impossible.
We won’t be seeing a Kenyan blockbuster
plastered with Kenyan brands and products
just yet. It isn’t for lack of trying, though.
The Kenyan film industry is vibrant, and
year on year there is steady growth not
just in the number of high quality films
coming to the box office, but in the number
of Kenyans going to the cinema to watch
Kenyan films.
The success of films like ‘Nairobi Half
Life’ and ‘Supamodo’ speak to the growing
maturity of Kenyan cinematic storytelling,
and in the audiences appetite for local
content on the silver screen. The successful
crossover of directors from features
to commercials echoes the chorus. A
commercially viable film industry is just
within reach.
From a Kenyan marketing perspective,
product placement is just about to come of
age. The proliferation of malls has created
a surge in the demand for cinemas. For
the first time in a long time, the number
of screens in Nairobi is expanding, not
contracting. It is unlikely that we will
reclaim all the cinemas that have long been
converted to churches. We will, however,
see more cinemas cropping up closer
to the mushrooming urban settlements
growing around Nairobi. Where malls go,
cinemas will follow.
A key concern of anyone considering
product placement will be the number
of people exposed to the message safely
tucked in a great Kenyan film. Even if you
do it right, how many people will see it?
Cinema culture is definitely growing in
Kenya. The key indicator of the potential
success of product placement in Kenyan
films is not in a census of the number of
butts in seats. The key indicator lies in the
explosive growth in the efficacy and reach
of social media. There is a complex fabric of
social interconnections that makes social
media in Kenya a fabulous amplifier. The
success of the controversial Wanuri Kahiu
film ‘Rafiki’ shows you just how far ripples
in the fabric can drive sales. The film ran
for a week and was completely sold out.
“Still, how many people will see my
product?” It’s a hard question to answer.
Thanks to social media, campaigns can be
tracked, quantified and endlessly measured
within a growing list of parameters. Films,
however, live forever, so a definitive answer
on the impact of a film may be years in the
making.
Take a look at Netflix. Films that were
released ages ago are making an initial
appearance on the VOD platform many
years after their initial release date. The
last film shot by legendary filmmaker
Orson Wells’ was released late last year,
despite him being dead many years.
The box office is the most immediate
measure of a film’s (and hence your
brand’s) ability to resonate with the
audience. Using those numbers, we can
sketch a loose picture of what success has
been achieved. “Nairobi Half Life” in a six
week cinematic release made 86,000$ and
was seen by 10,000 Kenyans. When you
take into account the fact that this film
had abismal advertising in comparison to
say, ‘Queen of Katwe’, that is no lean feat.
Let me unpack that for you, if I might. In
its opening week, ‘Nairobi Half Life was
seen by maybe 1,000 people. Those 1,000
people were so deeply moved, that each
one of them spoke to at least 10 other
people, and compelled them to go watch
it. Word of mouth is a powerful tool.
And therein lies the nugget. A great film
has the power to touch an audience so
deeply, that when they leave the cinema,
their conviction is enough to move 10
other people. Isn’t that the Holy Grail of
Marketing?
Albert Josiah is a writer, director,
film producer and the General
Manager of Film Studios Kenya.
You can commune with him on this or
related matters via email at: Albert@
fs.co.ke.