Product Placement Takes off in Russia

Barter Scheme with the Pentagon. Whenever characters in the Ca­sualty Effect TV series want to have a snack, in 10 cases out of 10 they will have a box of Moskovsky Kartofel potato chips. If the woman taxi driver in one of the series wants to have something sweet, it will come in the form of a Pobeda Vkusa chocolate bar. Should Nastya Kamenskaya, the principal in the Kamenskaya TV series, have a headache, she will always use Pentalgin. This choice does not come at die whim of film actors or film directors. Product placement is a new advertising method (new for Russia). Product placement companies work to ensure that their clients' products receive maximum screen time and exposure. Product placement can be seen as a modem version of the exhibit displays seen at world's fairs, concerts, sporting events, or anywhere that large num­bers of potential customers gath­ered. Product placement is also used in books (particularly novels) and video games — where sometimes the economics are reversed, ad video game makers pay for the rights to use real sports teams and players. In the West, this type of advertis­ing has been around for several decades now. Each Hollywood stu­dio has a product placement department. Product placement practice is used both by major pro­ducers and those that are just about to enter the market and put them­selves on the map.

"As with traditional product place­ment, producers can sell screen time on their programs to advertisers eager to reach consumers who now have the ability to skip traditional commercials using digital recorders like TiVo," writes Sam Lubell in The New York Times. "According to PQ Media, a media research firm, spending on product placement totaled $3.45 billion in 2004. Of that amount, $1.88 billion was spent on television, $1.25 billion on movies and $326 million on other media." And with the explosion of new for­mats like DVD, video-on-demand and online video in the last few years, digital placement gives adver­tisers and producers the option of cutting multiple deals with advertis­ers, placing one brand of soda in a first-run movie, selling placement for another brand in that movie's DVD release and a third in the portable video player version. Such customized uses, however, are not yet common.

Night Watch at $400,000. Russia also had some experience with product placement. But product placement in Russia is stillinits infancy. First examples date back to 1995 when the Urozhai vodka, the Kia Sportage off-road vehicle, the Red Bull beer, and Petr I (Peter the Great) cigarettes appeared in the popular film Peculiarities of National Hunting. Much has changed, during this decade: product placement is now widely used in Russian-made soap ope­ras, thrillers, love stories, etc. Furthermore, the Russian film industry is now on the up, opening new opportunities for domestic brands such as MTS (Mobile TeleSystems). Sure, the costs have also grown considerably, especially in thrillers that have a strong adver­tising element. For example, the film Night Watch will be remembered, among other things, for massive product place­ments (MTS, Rambler, Nescafe), estimated at $400,000 (an impres­sive figure by Russian standards). In addition, product placement com­panies have learned to seamlessly blend advertising images into the storyline: A spot called "250 hp under the hood," advertising Audi cars in the film Boxing a Shadow, won the first prize at a 2005 adver­tising festival.

Discovery Time. There is only one thing that has not changed. Strangely enough, this form of advertising is still outside the law in Russia — all because of Article 10 in the Law on Advertising that prohibits the use of covert advertising in radio, television, audio and film products, which is defined as "advertising that pro­duces a subconscious effect on the consumer, including through the use of special video insertions and other methods."

It is noteworthy that in 2005, prod­uct placement in Europe was effec­tively legalized under a directive by the European Commission, TV with­out Frontiers, designed mainly to enable European films and TV pro­grams to compete with non-Euro­pean films and programs from countries where product placement has become routine practice.

Of course, Russian film makers will find it even more difficult to com­pete, but at least Russian advertisers will now be able to prepare for the long-promised crisis of of commer­cials — that is, of course if product placement is legalized in Russia.

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