Product Placement is Here

Duff beer for me. Duff beer for you. I have a Duff. You have one too!

Product placement is a subtle form of advertising where a corporate sponsor pays money to have their products and logos used and displayed in the context of other media. One of the more famous examples of this in the modern era was the use of Reese's Pieces candy in the Steven Spielberg film, E.T. Today, product placement permeates almost every form of entertainment media, from sports to film to television. Star athletes get paid obscene amounts of money to wear a specific brand of shoe or to use a specific brand of equipment (for instance, LeBron James' and Tiger Woods' $90 million and $100 million deals with Nike, respectively). BMW won a lot of mindshare by having their MINI Coopers used in the film The Italian Job, where the cars were arguably bigger stars in the movie than the actors. Even the fake brands used in "The Simpsons" television show are well known to the public. The fact that every Simpsons fan knows Homer loves Duff beer is arguably the clearest indicator that product placement works.

Most of the time, product placement can have a positive effect, because having real brands displayed can add realism. It's better to see a character on screen drinking a can of Coke rather than a funny-looking can labeled, "Soda" or "Cola," which could break your suspension of disbelief. Where it gets annoying is when the product placement slams you over the head like a flashing pop-up ad. The same Coca-Cola that worked so well as just a bit of refreshment for a character becomes an absolute nuisance in American Idol, where the contestants wait anxiously in the obnoxiously red "Coca-Cola room" and sit on the red "Coca-Cola couch."

Antoine Walker has his Adidas Superstars on in NBA Live 2004.

Slowly but surely, product placement has made its way into video games. Though there have long been games based wholly around products (anyone remember Yo! Noid, the Domino's Pizza game, or Cool Spot, the 7up game on the SNES?), we're seeing more subtle product placement creeping into video games. Sega's Crazy Taxi lets you drive customers to Pizza Hut and KFC, instead of a generic pizza parlor or chicken joint. Racing games, like the Gran Turismo series, have always been judged based on how many real-life cars and aftermarket parts makers they can license. Even the tracks have realistic advertising banners for related products, like motor oil and tires. Sports games, like NBA Live 2004, have unlockable shoes, as well as all the players in the game who wear their real-life sponsors' brands.

That Puma warm-up jacket might be a little bloody after this standoff is over.

It's even gotten to the point that publishers are sending out press releases to proudly proclaim product placement (try saying that five times really fast) in their games. Just this past week, Activision announced that the characters in their game True Crime: Streets of LA are wearing clothes from Puma's latest fashion lines. Last year, Electronic Arts announced that McDonald's and Intel would be featured in The Sims Online, allowing virtual characters to scarf down brand-name burgers while playing with their Pentium-powered computers.

So is all of this product placement a good thing? Is it fair for us to pay money to play a game and be subjected to ads? I'm of the mind that product placement is a good thing when used the right way. Racing simulations can be a lot more fun and convincing when the developer gets the right to use real-life cars, like Hondas, and you can purchase real-life upgrades, like K&N filters and such. The use of real shoes in NBA Live 2004 was a cool idea and adds something to the game because shoe brands are a huge part of basketball culture. The use of Puma clothes in True Crime I'm indifferent about. I don't think it necessarily adds that much to the game, but it doesn't detract from it either. Where I would draw the line is if gameplay is fundamentally swayed or changed by the use of a brand. To use an example from films, I hated it when BMW won the rights to provide James Bond's car. He's a British secret agent who has always driven British makes, like Aston Martins and Lotuses, so it doesn't make sense that he'd switch to a German manufacturer.

Like it or not, product placement is growing more popular in video games as they become a more mainstream form of entertainment. Hopefully, we'll see publishers and developers using it tastefully, and, hopefully, they won't resort to really tacky uses of product licenses.