Natalie Myers

What’s Driving Growth of Consumer Product Placements?

May 8th, 2008

Coca Cola cups were displayed prominently in front of judges Randy, Paula and Simon during the last season of American Idol. It’s consumer product placement, of course, and it’s growing.

Some recent stats by Nielsen show the growth.  And it’s not tiny. Product placements grew 6% during the first quarter of 2008 alone. And product placement of the Top 10-featured brands on primetime network TV have grown by 52% so far this year when compared to last year.

Mark Alyn, a direct response marketer, has an interesting take. He thinks that marketers are increasing spend on product placement in TV shows because TiVo is ruining TV commercials.

Mark’s reasoning: Who wants to sit through commercials when that handy little record-it-now-watch-it-later service allows you to fast forward every time they appear? Good point.

Growth in product placements might also be a bi-product of the popularity of so many Idol-type shows. Look at Bravo, for instance. One of my favorite shows, Project Runway, presents so many opportunities for product placement — as does Top Chef. Last season, the fashion designers from Project Runway created outfits out of Levi jeans in one episode and Hershey products in the next.

I think the trend could be driven a bit by both TiVo and American Idol. The question is: Should marketers shift investment from TV commercials to product placements?

Natalie Myers

About Natalie Myers

Natalie Myers writes for MarketingSherpa’s Great Minds and Content Biz newsletters. She covers a broad array of topics for Great Minds, regularly interviewing thought leaders and experienced marketers about innovative or highly successful marketing strategies. For Content Biz she focuses specifically on online subscriptions models, including anything you pay for to read, listen to, watch, rent (as in Software as a Service models), etc.

She writes blog posts about topics relating to her beats, including useful information from interviews that doesn’t make it into an article.

Natalie's Posts | Send a Letter to the Editor

Categories: Branding, Consumer Marketing, Offline Marketing And Advertising Tags:



We no longer accept comments on the MarketingSherpa blog, but we'd love to hear what you've learned about customer-first marketing. Send us a Letter to the Editor to share your story.