The Subtle Side of TV Marketing

Gerald McRaney on CBS’ militaristic “Major Dad” wears standard-issue Rayban sunglasses. The hipper Jerry Seinfeld wears the sleeker, more fashionable Wayfarer model on his NBC series. But you’ll never see a television murderer wearing Raybans--not if Gary Mezzatesta has anything to say about it.

Mezzatesta is vice president of U.P.P. Entertainment Marketing in North Hollywood, one of several dozen companies in the field of product placement, the practice of attaining exposure for clients, particularly manufacturers’ products and services, by securing their use in “positive” ways in television programs and feature films.

Besides Seinfeld’s snappy shades, for instance, U.P.P. clients include Pelican pens, which sell for a cool $400 each but are provided gratis for the district attorneys of NBC’s “Law and Order” and Jessica Fletcher on CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote”; Keds sneakers, which adorn CBS’ “Murphy Brown’s” tootsies, and Time Inc. magazines, whose covers decorate Murphy’s “FYI” office.

Product placement is more limited on television than in features, where manufacturers routinely shell out hefty sums for the opportunity to display their wares on camera, because FCC regulations prohibit payment for such plugs on the airwaves. Then, too, there’s the matter of commercial sponsors: if Coca Cola is buying air time on your favorite sitcom, it does not want to see rival Pepsi quenching a character’s thirst for free.

Still, the practice has managed to increase in recent years.

“I can’t think of any product that isn’t (placed), other than something that is too small, such as pagers,” says Frank Devaney, senior vice president of the Burbank-based product placement group of the public relations firm of Rogers and Cowan and president of the Entertainment Resources and Marketing Assn. “It saves a show money by not renting or purchasing the item, and it gives the show realism.”

In a typical placement scenario, a set decorator or prop person will submit the program’s script to the product’s representative, along with a list of requested items. The representative will supply the items if he or she believes that doing so will benefit the client.

“If a car was being used to transport a dead body, or to run somebody down, we wouldn’t do it,” Devaney says. “But if there was a reason to have an accident--if it was driver error or the car was going over a cliff and into water--we would probably get them a brand-new car to wreck.” (Many such vehicles have been damaged and may look good for the cameras but could never be sold to the public.)

Adds Mezzatesta, “We work for McDonald’s. We wouldn’t want a situation where McDonald’s would be used to show that a character is a jerk and a job at a McDonald’s restaurant is the only work he could get.”

Sometimes a product manufacturer will shy away from on-screen treatment that sends a potentially dangerous message to viewers. “We have to be very careful about how Jack Daniels is used,” says Sam Baldoni, owner of Baldoni Entertainment Inc. in Santa Monica, who represents the whiskey.

“Jack Daniels would not want to promote itself as anything that is good for kids,” he says. “And I’d never put their product in the position of glorifying drinking, where people are getting smashed or drinking and driving.”

Conversely, manufacturers welcome the chance for positive product portrayals. Mezzatesta client IBM donated a computer for use by ABC’s “Doogie Howser, M.D.,” in part to convey a link between their product and the medical profession. Those $400 pens reach the upscale audience Pelican wants to attract. And the fact that Murphy Brown wears Keds, Mezzatesta says, creates an image of the shoes as ideal for “fast-paced people who want to do a lot of things at once and want to be comfortable.”

For their part, producers and directors sometimes go after certain products to telegraph information about a particular character. Someone at the wheel of a Cadillac or Rolls-Royce would automatically be perceived as wealthy, for instance, while the use of a computer by young Dr. Doogie established the teen-ager as precocious and intelligent.

In general, the Federal Communications Commission does not allow brand-name packaged products to be shown or mentioned on regulated programs. But some manage to slip by anyway, and others may receive approval from the networks’ standards and practices departments if there is a significant enough story point involved. Cable programming, which is not regulated by the FCC, does allow labels.

A significant exception to the anonymous-labeling rule was the ABC yuppie series “thirtysomething.” “They wanted the viewer to identify with the products, so they went to the network, who said, ‘Fine,’ ” Mezzatesta recalls. “We supplied Evian water and actual brands of cereals and cookies. It was a creative decision.”

Product placement can actually provide a public service as well as public relations. Says Devaney, “Not too many years ago, condoms couldn’t be seen, and now they can, which is good because it’s now a major health issue.”