Tom Cruise’s Ray-Bans in “Top Gun.” The trail of Reese’s Pieces E.T. follows into the bedroom. That Vespa Jennifer Coolidge rides while cruising through Sicily in “The White Lotus.” cruising through Sicily in “The White Lotus.”
Product placement in film and TV is everywhere, whether you notice or not. Sure, brands have been integrated in Hollywood since the birth of cinema, but product placement has always been more of an art than a science. Without viewership guarantees or full creative control over how a product is presented, it’s impossible for brands to know whether a placement is working — or if their money would be better spent on a traditional advertisement.
An in-house product placement department at United Talent Agency aims to change that. Using proprietary information, access to Hollywood deal flow and a small but mighty team of statistics nerds, the agency aims to forecast the impact of a placement and help brands determine where to put their ad dollars.
UTA’s investment in this world comes at a time when film and TV producers are more interested than ever in brand integration. “With budget cuts to content happening, producers are trying to figure out more ways to pad their budgets,” says Jillian Raskin, vice president of UTA, who heads the agency’s product placement wing. “They’re taking more of an active interest in the space.”
Whereas the practice used to trickle down from the network, which would sell ads and then force TV shows to integrate the products, today many producers are cutting out ad sales teams and working directly with brands. This awards season alone, the UTA team helped sneak Lyft into “Shrinking” and Montblanc into “The Bear,” and also place products in “The Pitt,” “The White Lotus,” “Abbott Elementary,” “The Studio,” “The Penguin” and 12 other Emmy-nominated shows.
There are essentially three ways for a product to land in a movie or TV show. One is a paid placement, a deal brokered between a brand and a network or studio, that can carry contingencies such as how visible the brand name is or how long it stays on-screen. Another is organic placement, in which a company offers a free supply of product with no guarantee of placement. (This type of arrangement is common with cars, phones and laptops.)
And the third way, which Raskin estimates accounts for 90% of all product placement, is for a product to be written into a scene without the company’s knowledge. For the brand, that can be pure serendipity, like Eggo waffles becoming Eleven’s preferred snack in “Stranger Things,” or a PR nightmare — like when Duke University publicly called out “The White Lotus” for dressing a drug-addled character contemplating suicide in a Blue Devils tee. Or when Peloton’s stock dropped 11% overnight after a character on “And Just Like That …” had a heart attack and died after a stationary bike session.
Using brands without permission rarely escalates to a lawsuit due to fair use protections, which is why networks like HBO seem unconcerned about brand backlash. “Still, some people play it very safe,” Raskin says. “Like, don’t have a character who is an alcoholic shown drinking a Budweiser. That’s going to come back and be bad for us.”
Aside from boosting production budgets, brands also can enhance the world-building of a show or movie, whereas “fake or nondescript brands can take a viewer out of the experience,” says Raskin. It can be jarring to spot soda labeled “Cola,” or even made-up brands like Heisler beer, which has been sipped in series like “New Girl” and “Parks and Recreation,” and Morley cigarettes, which have been puffed in “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men.”
For brands, a big benefit of product placement is that traditional ads are fleeting blips — annoying interruptions that can send viewers fumbling for the remote or sticking their hand out of the shower to hit “Skip.” Film and television are forever. Especially in the streaming era, where any old show or movie is prone to a random resurgence.
That said, it’s famously difficult to predict a hit in Hollywood. For example, General Motors couldn’t have known “Barbie” would bag $1.4 billion at the box office when it paid to have its cars parked outside the protagonist’s Dreamhouse. That’s partly why that partnership is considered the “Holy Grail” of brand integration, says entertainment marketing strategist Victoria Anorve, and one that “700 people claim credit for.”
Another recent placement those in the biz often hail is Coca-Cola in Season 2 of “The Bear.” As part of the deal, the beverage company purchased ads across Hulu and paid for a bottle of Coke Zero to sit next to Ayo Edebiri’s character, Sydney, in a scene where she and her father reminisce about her late mother on her birthday. UTA helped get Coca-Cola early access to Season 2 scripts, and it pinpointed the scene as a perfect venue for its “Recipe for Magic” campaign, which celebrated the small moments of human connection over food and a Coke. The spot worked because it was subtle — and because Season 2 launched to a 70% viewership spike compared with the first season.
Product placement can also put brands in the hands of celebrities who might otherwise be budgetarily out of their reach. One of UTA’s proprietary tools attempts to quantify a celebrity’s “star power,” but of course, not everything can be predicted by an algorithm.
“One of the examples we always talk about is ‘Suits,’” says data analyst Zachary Schwartz. “Your actress could become a princess, and then all of a sudden the show gets a trillion views.”