Hollywood : Product Placement

Think about the movies you saw this summer: Spiderman, Austin Powers, XXX, Insomnia or Sum of All Fears? Did you know that these movies made millions of dollars even before they were ever released? How? It’s called product placement. It’s when a company pays Hollywood to include their product in a movie. Companies do it all the time! James Bond introduced us to the BMW Z3 Roadster in Goldeneye, Spiderman almost got trampled on by a Terminix truck, and let’s not forget the Mini Cooper in Austin Powers Goldmember. Wonder what it cost them to do this? Well, just to give you an idea, Burger King spent $15 million in MIB II just to get their products featured on the screen. 3

Can you pinpoint a scene in your favorite movie that depicts smoking? Maybe not. The truth is we’re so used to it that it doesn’t stand out. But here, let us help you out: Cameron Diaz in Charlie’s Angels? Julia Roberts in My Best Friends Wedding? Brad Pitt in Fight Club? How about those friendly aliens in MIB II? Did you notice that most of those friendly aliens smoked? The tobacco industry claims it doesn’t pay Hollywood for including their products in films. In fact, it’s been illegal for them to do so since the Master Settlement Agreement in 1998. However, is the tobacco industry taking advantage of any loopholes by providing free promo items to movie studios? And, how ironic is it that Burger King is willing to shell out $15 million for the same airtime Marlboro apparently got for free?

It’s an age-old marketing tactic: Get products in films, people think it’s cool, people buy. Big Tobacco has known this for years. Before the Master Settlement Agreement in 1998, the tobacco industry POURED money into movie studios in order to get their products in films between 1972 and 1991. They knew that product placement was the best way to reach their target audience since they couldn’t advertise on TV anymore! Here, read it in their own words:

“Film is better than any commercial that has been run on television or in any magazine, because the audience is totally unaware of any sponsor involvement.” 4
Robert Richards president of Productions, Inc. (a movie and television company) in 1972

“Our primary objective will remain the same, to have smoking featured in a prominent way, especially when it is tied favorably with celebrities.” 5
Letter written to President of RJR from its PR firm in 1981

“Recently there have been a number of high-visibility feature films in which one or more of the central characters smoke a particular brand of cigarettes. This has been happening because cigarette manufacturers have been paying for the exposure.” 6
Letter written to B&W from its PR firm in 1982

“Many times we can get a display, a sign, a t-shirt, a logo, etc inserted into a positive scene, even when the product may not be used in the movie. This gives us a
real life environment into which your name is used.” 7
John McGinn, Advertising Director for American Tobacco Company

“For a monthly fee, Rogers and Cowan will arrange to obtain placement of RJR products, packages, and advertising in films through smoking scenes in which actors are shown smoking…
Film placement of RJR brands will create favorable imagery and presence as advertising restrictions intensify.” 8
A 1990 agreement between RJR International and its PR firm

There. You’ve heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Every tobacco company was jumping on the product placement bandwagon. They were each shelling out big bucks to make sure their product got in films. Take a look at how each of them spent their time and money to make sure people saw their products in films:

Paid to have their products in specific movies and have them smoked by specific actors. 9
Took great interest in what rival tobacco company Philip Morris was doing to get Marlboro on screen. 10
Sent monthly mailings of free cigarettes to 188 actors and celebrities who smoke in order to get them to light up on screen. 11
Completed a mailing to female celebrities inviting them to try the new More Lights 100s. 12

Provided free cigarettes for use in “adult” films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Grease and Die Hard. 13
Paid Superman II producers $43,000 to include Marlboro in the movie: “Superman II also included a classic fight scene in which Superman and the bad guys throw a Marlboro truck back and forth across Lexington Avenue. This truck was a prop produced solely for the movie and exists no where else.” 14
Bragged about placing their product in over 191 movies between 1978 and 1988. Forty-eight (48) of the movies had a “PG” rating, 91 had an “R” rating and 10 had a “G” rating, including The Muppet Movie. 15
Studios, including Fox, solicited money from Philip Morris to put smoking on screen. 16
Philip Morris cigarette promotions, such as the Virginia Slims Tennis Tournament, provided opportunities for Hollywood celebrity appearances benefiting both the tobacco company and the celebrities. 17

Arranged to pay Sylvester Stallone $500,000 in 1983 to use its cigarettes in at least five movies. 18
Kept a “second set of books” for money that was supposed to be spent on product placement in movies. Since they were concerned that producers might not feel right about getting actual check payments, one of their memos states that “payment in the form of cash, jewelry, cars, etc.” might be a better option. 19
Released cinema advertisements that ran before previews in 1983. The ad also ran with Disney’s animated film Snow White. They pulled it after the Massachusetts Group Against Smoke Pollution protested. 20

After Congress started to question the tobacco industry on their activities with the movie industry in 1989, the tobacco industry released several statements denying the facts:

“Tobacco companies do not encourage smoking scenes in movies. They never request changes, and have never been given the right to make changes to any film.” 21
Charles Whitely of the Tobacco Institute, July 7, 1989

“[Brown and Williamson] did not know of any situation in which it caused a smoking scene to appear in a movie or television program since 1979.” 22
B&W’s response to Congress, June 16, 1989

“We do not pay any company for product placement. We do not seek product placement. All requests are unsolicited.” 23
Philip Morris response to Congress in1989

In 1990, the industry attempted to solve the “problem,” which they originally claimed didn’t even exist, by modifying their voluntary Cigarette Advertising and Promotion Code. In the Code, they say:

“No payment shall be made by any cigarette manufacturer or any agent thereof for the placement of any cigarettes, cigarette packages, or cigarette advertisements as a prop in any movie produced for viewing by the general public.” 24

In 1998, the state Attorneys General finally stepped in and made it official. Tobacco companies could not PAY for any product placement whatsoever. In Section III, subsection (e) of the Master Settlement Agreement it states:

“No Participating Manufacturer may … make or cause to be made, any payment or other consideration to any other person or entity to use, display, make reference to or use as a prop any Tobacco Product, tobacco Product package, advertisement for a Tobacco Product or any other item bearing a brand name in any motion picture, television show, theatrical production or other live performance, live or recorded performance of music, commercial film or video, or video game ...” 25

Regardless, the American Lung Association of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails’ Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! Program (TUTD), as well as renowned researcher James Sargent, continued watching Hollywood’s practice of using smoking and tobacco products in their films. A recent study by TUTD examined brand use in the top 50 films annually between 1991 and 2000 and found that not much has changed. And more recent research found that two out of three tobacco shots in the Top 50 movies released from April 2000 - March 2001 were in kid-oriented G, PG, and PG-13 films. Either top executives are trading favors with Big Tobacco, in which case they are corrupt. Or, they’re pumping up Big Tobacco’s profits for free; in which case they are stupid. Here are some other findings:

40 of the exposures were Phillip Morris products,
35 of them were Marlboros.

Sargent and colleagues reviewed the top grossing 25 films each year between 1988 and 1997 and found that:

85% of movies had tobacco use in them. 27
28% (including one in five children's movies) displayed brand logos. 28

Brand exposure through actor use increased from 1% before the industry’s voluntary restriction on product placement to 11% afterward. 29
Tobacco was used once every three to five minutes in movies from the 1990s, an increase from once every ten to 15 minutes in movies from the 1970s and 1980s. 30
Nine out of ten Hollywood films in the 1990s included the use of tobacco. 31

Two out of three tobacco shots in the top 50 movies released from April 2000 - March 2001 were in kid-oriented G, PG, and PG-13 films. (The year before only 21% of the tobacco spots were in G. PG, and PG-13 films.) 32

Movie screenwriters and directors are always saying how they portray what’s going on in the world. “Art imitates life” yadda, yadda, yadda. Well, ironically enough, their real life depiction of cigarette use is actually way off! Studies have shown that Hollywood films greatly exaggerate the percentage of people in the population who smoke. In actuality:

If you take the amount of characters who smoke on screen and you take the number of people who smoke in real life – the ratio doesn’t add up! More characters smoke on screen than people do in real life! 33

Real Life: 14% of people of similarsocial backgrounds in thegeneral
populations smoke 35

Hollywood portrays smoking as something that is done by middle and upper class people. You know, families in the suburbs with the white picket fence and folks living in the Upper East Side.

Why is this a big deal? Because Hollywood is falsely giving people a positive impression of what smoking does for you. They are actively creating the illusion that if you want to be part of this “elite” group of people who are cool and have the perfect life then smoking will help you get there. Tobacco researcher from the University of California San Francisco, Stan Glantz, says that the use of tobacco in films is not only increasing, but the images of smoking are “reinforcing misleading images that present smoking as a widespread and socially desirable activity.” These portrayals may encourage teenagers, the major movie audience, to smoke. 36

If you’re wondering whether smokers in movies portray heroes or villains, the truth is it simply doesn’t matter anymore whether a smoking character plays a villain or hero. What matters is whether they are high status characters. That’s why you’ll see: Nicolas Cage, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, Leonardo DeCaprio and Winona Ryder among on-screen smokers. 37

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health recently analyzed five films featuring ten popular actresses. Surprisingly, well maybe not surprisingly, they found that women in leading or supporting roles were just as likely to smoke than the men! 38 This makes sense. As women’s roles in society increased, so has their smoking in films. Women who smoke in movies usually represent one of the following: a career-minded, independent woman who juggles work and family and smokes to cope with the stress, or a single, career-minded, independent woman who smokes to prove how single and independent she is!

It’s an image that is all too familiar among Hollywood women. Think about divas like Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, for example. She doesn’t juggle work and family, but she surely personifies a free and independent woman, not to mention a serious chain smoker. What you may not know is that the director of that movie, Joe Eszterhas (Es-terhouse) admits that he purposely made her that way! In an opinion-editorial he wrote for The New York Times, he says: 39

“Smoking was an integral part of many of my screenplays... In one of my movies, “Basic Instinct” smoking is part of a sexual subtext. Sharon Stone's character smokes; Michael Douglas is trying to quit. She seduces him with literal and figurative smoke that she blows into his face. In the movie’s most famous and controversial scene, she even has a cigarette in her hand. ... I'm sure the tobacco companies loved “Basic Instinct.” One of them even launched a brand of “Basic” cigarettes not long after the movie became a worldwide hit, perhaps inspired by my cigarette-friendly work. My movie made a lot of money; so did their new cigarette.”

“What are you going to do? Charge me with smoking?” Sharon Stone, Basic Instinct

What does all this research about tobacco product placements mean? How does smoking in films affect us? Well, lots of people have conducted tons of studies regarding how these issues mentioned above affect teens. We could go on forever with stats and graphs to show you, but, basically, what they have found is consistent across the board. It all boils down to this:

Non-smoking teens whose favorite stars smoke on screen are 16 times more likely to develop positive feelings toward smoking. 40

Teens who view lots of smoking in movies are two and a half times more likely to start smoking. 41

In short, by using cigarettes as a way to portray someone as cool and rebellious, Hollywood helps shape the way teens see smoking and Big Tobacco may be behind the effort!