I’ve got no problem with brands appearing in movies. So long as it’s done right. If it diminishes the artistic integrity of the film, causing it to become a commercial, it’s not done right.

Sometimes the integrity of a movie is upheld by making sure a brand is visible in a scene. Whatever is being filmed might mean that a brand should be included as it would naturally occur there in the wild (so to speak). For example a shot of a car driving along a road towards us. As we see the front of the car in the shot it would be normal to see the logo. The audience would probably find it stranger and more distracting not to have the brand in the scene. In this case if the logo was removed or taped off. Including an invented logo on the car would likely have a similar effect.

Product placements that evolve naturally from the script are usually more credible. Had the script not pointed towards a need for a particular placement then it is likely to stick out and compromise the integrity of the movie. For example, having a character drive a Volvo can help to underline or establish that character’s desire for safety. A Porsche would give a different impression. Matching a movie with the right brands is essential for credibility. Filmmakers do this in pre-production through brand line-ups called ‘show and tells’ to determine which brands best suit a film and its characters.

Picking the right brand isn’t enough. It has to appear naturally. If the appearance of the brand seems contrived or awkward it lessens the artistic integrity of the film. Giving a brand undue attention usually indicates a movie’s creative integrity has been violated. But not always, sometimes the circumstances of a movie demand a slow pan across a logo.

How often a brand shows up in a movie is another issue. As indeed is the total number of products placed. Again context is everything.

It doesn’t matter what the filmmaker does. Follow the rules. Break the rules. Just as long as it works for the movie.

For some allowing anything commercial to have any level of influence on a movie robs it of something. Worthiness or some such probably. Thus they see product placement as a corruption of the film art form.

I don’t agree. Not entirely. Product placement can be done badly and distract the audience. But it doesn’t have to be done badly. Being paid to include something in an artwork doesn’t have to diminish it.

Product placement can be seen as akin to the depiction of donors in paintings as transpired around the time of the Renaissance. In Masaccio’s Trinity (circa 1428) the donor and his wife are depicted praying. They are outside the arch, on a lower level, and at the same scale as the other figures in the painting. Titan’s Pesaro Madonna, painted between 1519 and 1526, includes donor portraits of five members of the commissioning Pesaro family.

The Renaissance isn’t the earliest period when donor portraits appeared. Anicia Juliana is depicted in a donor portrait in the Vienna Dioscurides, one of the earliest and most lavish illuminated manuscripts still in existence.

An artist’s costs were covered by donors. Product placement helps filmmakers with the cost of making their movie or its promotion.

Donors appearing in paintings was an extensive practice. We don’t look at these paintings and think that including the donor has somehow made them lessened them. No, we look at them and see art.

There are three categories that product placement in movies fall into. Visual, audio, and plot placements. The terms themselves are pretty self explanatory.

Visual Placement

Visual placement is when a brand or recognisable product appears on screen. Not all visual placements are the same. How prominent a brand is in a visual placement is determined by factors like the style of the camera shot, and the number of on screen appearances. Visual placements include outdoor advertisements in urban scenes or food brands in kitchen scenes.

Audio Placement

Audio placement is when a brand appears on the audio track. Generally this means the brand is mentioned in the dialogue by a character. The prominence of an audio placement is determined by a number of factors. The context the brand is mentioned in. The frequency at which the brand is mentioned. The emphasis put on the brand name (tone of voice, place in dialogue, who the character speaking is, etc).

Plot Placement

Brands or products can only show up in movies in two ways. Seeing them or hearing about them – visual and audio placements. A plot placement can be visual or auditory or a combination of both. What makes it a plot placement is the level of connection the brand has with the story or a character. The more central to the plot, or identifiable with a character the brand is the higher the level of intensity the plot placement has.

Product placement is when a brand or product is integrated into a movie through an agreement between the filmmakers and the brand owners. The filmmakers don’t do it out of a desire to be nice to the poor brand owners either. Nope, ‘pay me’ they say. It doesn’t have to be cash. It could also be through some form of promotional exposure.

This is different to brand clearance where the filmmakers want to, or need to, include a brand in a movie and need to get permission from the brand owner. The filmmaker wants to use a brand as a creative tool.

From the viewpoint of the brand owner product placement is a tool to promote their brand. That doesn’t stop the filmmaker from being able to use it as a creative tool. Nor should it.

Either way once a brand is in a movie the audience has no way of knowing if the filmmaker got paid to include it or not.

‘Product placement’ or ‘brand placement’, which is the correct term?

I’ve always preferred ‘brand placement’. If a detergent were to be used in a movie then it would be a real brand (Bold, Tide, or the like) and not just a box with ‘detergent’ written on it. But, as it turns out, I’m in the minority. My preference doesn’t count. The term ‘product placement’ is the one most used in the industry. Easily confirmed by comparing the two terms in Google Trends, where ‘product placement’ outstrips ‘brand placement’ by fifty to one.

We are surrounded by products and brands. It’s our reality. If you made a movie based in our world, our reality, it would make sense to include the brands and products that we find around us. Not just that but it would be weird not to.

Our choices of brands and product tell stories about us. They tell other people something about us. It’s why we are so brand conscious. Or at least most of us are. Some of us wouldn’t be caught dead wearing certain brands. It would send a message that we didn’t want to send. Others embrace those brands because it sends exactly the right message.

In a movie the product choices a character makes tell us stories too. The main character in a movie drives a rusting Ford Mustang that belches smoke and makes weird banging noises. What do we find out about the character from that? Maybe the character isn’t very well off. Maybe the character is just going through a rough patch. Maybe the character isn’t a car person and doesn’t care that the car is a real clunker. It’s just a piece of information about the character that we end up putting together with all the other bits to get a clearer picture of the character.

We pick up on cues from brands and products as we’re watching movies. We’re not always meant to get strong signals from them. So, sometimes we’re consciously aware of them, sometimes not.  If used badly they’re jarring if used well they add to our experience.