Product Placement

You’ve all seen it in the movie: the strategically placed Coke can, the BMW that gets more screen time than the star.

These icons didn’t end up in the movie because a set dresser needed something to fill a spot on the table. Companies paid good money to get their products some screen time, in hopes that the subliminal message would yield more sales at grocery stores or car dealers.

Sometimes these placement efforts are blatant to the point of crass. Oldsmobile dragged its Silouette minivan (Remember Oldsmobile? Remember the Silouette? I didn’t think so.) so deeply into the movie Get Shorty, it should’ve gotten a credit above the title. There were more lines referring to the “Cadillac of minivans” than some of the stars got.

The same thing goes on in books.

I am a big fan of Patricia Cornwell, at least her Kay Scarpetta series. She’s tried to branch out with a series built around a reporter, Andy Brasil in Charlotte, NC. The book has the feel of something she wrote before she became famous, but my larger problem is her use of product placement. It seems like every chapter is crammed with references to Ruth’s Chris Steak House or Piggly Wiggly.

Okay, I agree that these cultural references help to anchor a story in a particular time and place. I do the same thing, but as often as not, my references are to places that no longer exist, like the Cooper’s Arms in Rochester. I don’t know about Patricia Cornwell, but I’m certainly not getting paid to put Coke in my Blog or my novels.

Commercialism aside, references to specific products can be an extremely valuable context. In my forthcoming book, Paris Pariahs, Frank Healy descends into alcoholism on gallon jugs of Wild Turkey. Many authors evoke Jim Beam for similar purposes, but I believe Wild Turkey is a little closer to the gutter where my character is headed. Cheval Regal would not get him to the same place.

Product placement can be used as a social register. Bottles of Chateau Latour Pauillac 1959 figure in both Grand Designs and Paris Pariahs. While today wine is much more deeply ingrained in the social landscape, before 1980 it was much more of an upper class marker. Even though my family drinks, I can’t remember seeing a bottle of wine in the house while growing up. Something as rare as Chateau Latour Pauillac would be precious beyond imagining.

Thrillers tend to have odd product placements. Writers provide precise references to weapons and other military technology as a marker of verisimilitude, but no ordinary person is likely to ever see a Barrett REC7, but we all know about AK-47s. How about some third generation NVGs?

I have to go. I feel compelled to buy a Barrett. Maybe I can find one on Craig’s List.