For Broadcast February 18, 2010

Forget the gripes, product placement could help shows get noticed.

Here’s a little quiz for you: what brand of car does Kenneth Branagh drive in the title role of the award-winning Wallander? It’s a Volvo. Now, how much did Volvo pay for that placement? Nothing at all. It was “prop placement”, where a producer tells the prop agencies that it needs a car, and one is procured.

In this case, Volvo stepped up and was glad to be anywhere near a gloomy-faced Branagh driving through stunning Swedish countryside. Did Volvo make the series any worse? I’d argue it made it more realistic. The upside was the producers got a free car, and the series won awards, so everyone’s happy.

There are many prop placement deals in UK TV, and not just on the BBC, and no one has died of brand contagion-related diseases. Many US TV imports like 24 and House include product placement. Perhaps British soaps would be more realistic if there were real products in them. Coronation Street’s fictitious cereal brand is called Honey Nut Burst. Would real-life Honey Nut Crunch destroy the integrity of the series? Absolutely not. Nor would the Corrie writers be easily lured into making commercially led script changes.

I do support the government protecting young kids and setting some general PP standards, like not allowing blatant product endorsement. And young kids shouldn’t have junk food thrown at them, just like it can’t be advertised around children’s shows. But the emphasis should be on protecting young children because older kids are prob ably more sophisticated about when they are being sold to than many adults.

The £3bn annual TV ad revenue is forecast to continue falling and product placement is estimated to be worth between £25m and £100m, so it’s not scads of money nor an overnight panacea.

But according to Madigan Cluff/Essential Television statistics, ITV stands to gain the most and the quickest: some 65% of programmes transmitted by ITV in peak hours in 2009 could be available for placement, the analyst says, picking out the likes of Benidorm and Harry Hill’s TV Burp.

Broadcasters and producers will have to be trusted not to push their audiences too far, and I don’t think the legacy of well-made British TV is going to be overwhelmed by a money grab. I think a more pertinent question is who gets the money from product placement: the broadcaster or the producer? I can see another term of trade-like discussion coming down the track fast.

And here’s another thought: when more and more TV is ending up on VOD and online, perhaps being affiliated with a big brand would do more for a programme than simply helping to increase its margin.

Expect creative solutions. In the Netherlands, an Endemol show, Julia’s Steps, ran for three seasons, sponsored by Dutch fashion retailer Steps. The actresses would wear dresses that would then be on sale in shops the next day - boosting sales but also building awareness and hype around the show.

In a noisy world of choice, maybe brands could help guide UK viewers to programmes and content they might not otherwise have found. Now that’s product placement worth having.