From Ford vehicles to the Guitar Hero game, anyone with a massive placement budget is jumping on the American Idol product placement bandwagon. According to a 2006 poll, almost 50% of senior marketing execs have paid for an editorial or broadcast placement. Here are some of the top product placements that have blatantly taken American Idol from a singing competition to a really long singing advertisement.
Ford
There is nothing subtle about Ford’s product placement. It’s even become a segment on the show. The music video that the contestants tape every week is called the “Ford Music Video.” It’s not enough that they are sitting in the Ford vehicle, singing in it, on top of it, washing it, chasing it and doing whatever else they can to show Ford’s emblem in all its glory. The winner and runner up for 2008’s season, David Cook and David Archuleta, each got a Ford Escape Hybrid as a prize.
AT&T
AT&T is right up there with Ford on the subtlety rating. Voters vote for their favorite Idol every week using their AT&T phones. The total text messages sent during the 7th season of American Idol: 78 million. The average Idol voter voted by text message 38 times in April 2008. That equals big money for AT&T in the way of text message charges as well as the in-show advertisement. AT&T believes that American Idol has been the most important element in getting more cell phone users to text.
Season six (2007) had 4,349 product placement occurrences, with most of them in foreground shots, according to Nielsen. AT&T was in second place for the most number of occurrences on American Idol in 2007. Who beat out AT&T? Your refreshing drink, brought to you by Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola has an ongoing advertising campaign with Idol and beat out AT&T by 2,000 placement occurrences in season six. Who else could keep the judges refreshed other than Coca-Cola? I wonder if Simon ever gets a slap on the wrist when the logo on his red cup isn’t facing the camera?
Guitar Hero
Last but not least, let’s mention Guitar Hero, which made it into a music video (non-Ford, I believe) a la Tom Cruise in Risky Business lip-syncing Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll.” Guitar Hero is a billion dollar video game franchise for the company Activision.
Surprisingly, American Idol viewer ship hasn’t gone down because it’s turned into a rolling advertisement. What can we learn from all of this? If you’re going to throw product placement in people’s faces, make sure you’ve got a heck of a good show that can support it.
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