Product Placements, Alcohol

The placement of different brands of alcohol in movies has a long tradition, and product placements [Page 674]of alcohol also appear frequently in rap songs. Although concerns have been raised about the impact of such placements on adolescent drinking, research is needed to explore the influence of product placements on adolescents' attitudes toward drinking, their perceptions of the normative appropriateness of drinking and the prevalence of drinking, and whether placements influence adolescent drinking behavior.

One early example of product placement of alcohol in movies is the 1945 movie, Mildred Pierce, in which Joan Crawford—who received the best actress Academy Award for this role—drank Jack Daniel's whiskey. Perhaps a better known example is Katharine Hepburn's discarding Humphrey Bogart's—he received the best actor Academy Award for this role—Gordon's Dry Gin into the river in The African Queen (1951). The placement of alcohol products in the media is widespread. A content analysis of the top 10 movies each year of the 1990s found that the two most popular placements in these movies were for soft drinks and beer. In 1997–1998, there were over 230 paid placements of alcoholic products in movies and more than 180 different paid placements in TV series. In 2005, the first product placement on Broadway was for Jose Cuervo tequila in the Neil Simon play, Sweet Charity. Simon agreed to changes in the script so that the placement could occur. Likewise, recent studies of popular music have found that close to half of all rap songs mentioned specific brands of alcohol.

Why have product placements become so prominent? One reason is that audiences seem to like product placements because they make the TV show or movie seem more realistic. Indeed, early product placements simply involved a company providing its product to production companies for use in movies. More recently, product placements have developed into a form of paid advertising, where the company pays for the product to be used in a movie or TV show; more prominent product placements cost more than simple background placements of the product. Indeed, the practice should be called brand placement because the investment in placements is not to increase the use of the product category; rather, companies hope the placement will increase the use of their brand of the product. For example, sales of Red Stripe beer reportedly increased 50% after it appeared in the movie, The Firm. A second reason why placements may be so popular is the practice allows advertisers to target very specific audiences because the demographics of who attends which kinds of movies are well understood. Third, compared to paid advertisements, product placements are cheap.

The concern about alcohol product placements involves their effect on children's and adolescents' likelihood of drinking alcohol. A 1998 survey found that 50% of all high school seniors reported drinking at least once in the past month, and 31.5% of the seniors had engaged in binge drinking (defined as five or more drinks in a single drinking episode). However, as the American Medical Association notes in a 2001 report on underage drinking, there is a distinct lack of research on the influence of product placements on adolescent drinking.

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