Integrity vs Profit. Is the publishing industry being taken over by product placement, and will this have a negative or positive impact on authors, publishers, and their readers?
Product Placement has long been accepted in movies, television, and music. Advertisers pay substantial sums in order to appear in a show, a song, or film. And, according to Advertising Age magazine, the fast food chain, McDonalds was offering rappers £2.70 (approx $4) each time a song that name-checks a Big Mac is played. (BBC. 2005). Although seemingly modest amount, an A-list song on Radio 1 is played twenty-five times a week (The Observer. 2014). This is just one station in the United Kingdom. That aside, paid placements have been present in films since the silent era and their techniques have become increasingly transparent. Although, producers are coy over how much money is exchanged, it is substantial; for example the James Bond film, ‘Skyfall’ exceeded $40 million in product placement fees (Huffington Post. 2012). Are we now witnessing a trend where brand placement is exploiting the publishing industry, and will this destroy its integrity? Or, will this be a lucrative business for authors and revive an age where a writer could earn a living from their work?
The online Business Dictionary defines Product placement as follows:
An advertising technique used by companies to subtly promote their products through a non-traditional advertising technique, usually through appearances in film, television, or other media.
Product placements are often initiated through an agreement between a product manufacturer and the media company in which the media company receives economic benefit. A company will often pay a fee to have their product used, displayed, or significantly featured in a movie or show.
The definition ends with, ‘Some people consider product placement to be deceptive and unethical.’ This is the conundrum in the publishing industry. A book is seen as an escape from the stress of everyday capitalism. Books are a sacred world where we are free from the barrage of advertisements being thrust into our faces. Sometimes brands are useful literary devices for characterisation and plot development, and occasionally a unique way to relating to the reader. However, these incidences does not mean the author has received sums of money to deliberately include a product, it is rather a tool for the narrative. Caroline Goldsmith, founder of Red Button Publishing said;
Books have been consistently devalued in recent years, in both paper and digital formats … if consumers continue to demand content very cheaply, or for free, then it’s only a matter of time before literature is seen as a vehicle for product placement …’ (Erik. 2014).
The placing of products in literature for a fee may be controversial, yet it is an even older tradition than in the movies. The Victorian English patent medicine vendor, Thomas Holloway, was alleged to have asked Charles Dickens to mention Holloway’s own branded medicine in Dombey & Son. Dickens refused (Hackley. 2014). However, a serialised 1849 edition of ‘David Copperfield’, there were advertisements for Freeman’s Spermazine Wax Lights and Dr. Lucock’s Pulmonic Wafers beside adverts for Arrowsmith’s Pianoforte and Toilet Covers (Klove. 2007) It is unknown whether Dickens was aware of this prior to publication, but authors were rarely consulted nor compensated for this practice.
When in 1872, Jules Verne began to serialise ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’, Verne stated he had been inspired by a Thomas Cook advert he had seen in a Parisian newspaper. It is to be noted that at the time he was being lobbied by transport and shipping companies for a mention. (Gaughran. 2012). Product Placement has, and is, an old and well-used trick.
Cigarette advertising was prominent for a large proportion of the twentieth century, and in the first few decades they were initially marketed towards women (Yale. 2017). The advertisements related smoking to the changing attitudes in social customs such as dancing, shorter and far more revealing dresses, and promiscuous activities; in a sense it was aimed at ‘The New Woman’, a term made famous by Ouida in 1872.
The 1919 controversial bestseller, The Sheik, written by E.M Hull, is about a young heiress who is kidnapped by a brutish Arab Sheik, and inevitably she falls in love. It was the first novel to have appeared on the bestseller list for two consecutive years (Leider. 2004) and was continuously reissued in paperback from the 1920s to 1960s. During this forty-year period, it is estimated to have sold 1,194,000 in hardback alone (Blake. 2008). In the novel, cigarettes occur forty-seven times; this excludes where there are references to smoking, lighting up, and other such character actions. It is subtly planting the notion that smoking is what you should be doing.
In the proceeding decades, the cigarette industry became far more blatant and aggressive with their advertising techniques, it was not just a matter of subtle product placement. The science fiction novel, ‘Quest for the Future’ by A.E.Vogt was first published in hardback in 1970. In Chapter 15 it read;
A large gleaming machine with an opening at one end was wheeled in, and once again the cycle ran its Micronite Filter. Mild, Smooth Taste. For all the right reasons. Kent. America’s Quality Cigarette. King Size or Deluxe 100s (Klove. 2007)
This was a full-colour advertising insert that had been bound into the book. This was not just limited to Vogt’s book. Paperbacks from the 1960s and 70s were stuffed with adverts, and more than 40-million pages of book-bound tobacco industry documents have been archived in the University of California, San Francisco’s Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (Klove. 2007).
It was in 1958 the paperback advertising industry really kicked off with a company called, The Quality Book Group. In a somewhat misleading name, its purpose was to sell advertisements in paperbacks and had been founded by a Madison Avenue ad-man, Roy Benjamin. The first book was Dr Benjamin Spock’s ‘Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care’, and it was their most successful advertising campaign. A 1959 Pocket Books print run of 500,000 which included adverts for Q-Tips, Carnation and Proctor & Gamble and by 1963, a 26 page insert in the book was demanding $6,500 to $7,500 per page (Klove. 2007). Advertisements had by now begun to creep into other pulps as well. Spock had taken his publisher to court stating he was misled into signing permission to use the adverts. The judge sided with the publisher which opened the floodgates for a barrage of advertisements in paperbacks to saturate the market (Collins 2007)
Lorillard Tobacco Company brought hundreds of thousands a piece of print-runs of pulpy volumes. By 1975, the company had spent $3 million for advertisements in a massive 540 million paperbacks. They had come under criticism for placing adverts in books that were aimed primarily at teens, such as the ‘Avenger’ series, and other cigarette adverts were appearing in books that were assigned for schools. That aside, it was often the authors who were the last to know about these placements. (Collins. 2007) American Miami News columnist, John Keasler said; ‘We will see the day when we will turn a page of Hemingway, or Wolfe … and the next page will say Are Your Underarms Really With It?’ However, a 1972 study in advertising (Leech. 1972), found that although readers disliked the concept of adverts in books, the actual exposure to the adverts in practice increased their brand awareness. The product placement was working to the advertisers benefit.
By the late-1970s, the practice of placing tobacco advertisements in paperbacks had waned due to the demographics changing. Smokers were becoming less-educated. In addition, the Authors Guild now had a contract that banned unauthorised adverts. ‘Unauthorised’ being the important word. What if authors were no longer misled, or misinformed, but were now lured by the financial opportunities that brand placement offered? Or, skip the authors altogether and just let the marketing team write their own brand heavy story to appear online, in magazines, or on the shelves of the nearest chain bookshop?
Commercially successful musicians, actors, designers, and even social media celebrities see no issue with commercial partnerships with brand companies. Film and TV scriptwriters are used to working closely with brands to weave mentions into the plot. According to Frank Zazza from product placements agents iTVX; in 2005, it would cost approximately £215,000 to buy a 20 second product placement written into a script of a show like Desperate Housewives (Duffy. 2005). Successful authors are not out of the club. What is troubling is that words carry far more weight than something visual like a film. Print media is more and more targeted by product placement and the term, ‘native advertising’ (formerly called advertorial) has been coined to describe a hybrid promotional technique combining elements of celebrity endorsement, advertising, sponsorship, and public relations. It is brand-sponsored editorial that is deliberately made to look ‘native’ to the publication (Hackley 2014). Its aim is to engage readers enough to not notice they are being sold to. Where brands shy away from lying, as ultimately they will be caught out, PR has little concerns with this as it tends to straddle the line between fiction and factual.
Novels are not editorial but are creative fiction unlike brand journalism which is supposed to be a factual representation. If these two merge, for example journalism becomes a function of the advertising industry and just a vehicle to make money, then perhaps we should be more lenient on authors who take money for splicing brands into their books.
Fay Weldon is credited as the first author to have signed a commissioned product placement deal, and she allegedly declared, ‘Let it be mud’ in reference to her name. It was the 2001 novel called ‘The Bulgari Connection’ that caused the controversy. It does not take too much to guess which company had signed the deal with Weldon. The Italian jewellery company, Bulgari, paid the author an undisclosed amount for mentioning the brand at least twelve times. As an extra mark of subtly, Weldon wore $1.5 million worth of their jewellery at the launch of the book. Comments at the time included: ‘for a novelist to celebrate a corporation for a fee is a revolting idea’ (Flood. 2014).
In 2013, British romance fiction author, Carole Matthews took things a little further than Weldon. She signed an undisclosed deal with the Ford Motor Company to mention their cars prominently in not one, but several of her books. One of these books is called, ‘You Drive Me Crazy.’ It is unknown if she currently drives a Ford car.
Much like the old tobacco advertisements that were seemingly targeting teens, it is troubling to find that advertisers are still pushing their wares at the suggestible young adult market. In 2006, Proctor & Gamble, who we saw selling their brand in Spock’s book in 1959, teamed up with Running Press, a unit of Perseus Book Group. The partnership was with CoverGirl (P&G owned), and a book called, ‘Cathy’s Book: If Found Call: (650) 266-8233’. The authors, Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman (who have both admitted to have backgrounds in marketing), nor the publisher were paid to mention their protagonist wearing certain ‘killer shades of lipgloss’ but instead the book was heavily promoted on the entertainment website, ‘beinggirl.com‘ that targeted teen girls and was owned by the company. The book itself was a ‘genre-bending mystery’ which features a series of clues that are given in voice-mail messages, websites and letters that are included to or referred to in the book. There was outrage when consumer groups realised that this was heavily branded. Both the Los Angeles Times, and New York Times published a critical editorial, and the advocacy group, Commercial Alert called for a boycott. The hardback edition was heavy on the product placement, but when the paperback was published all brand mentions had been erased. The author of ‘Cathy’s book’, Sean Stewart said, ‘It was no longer about the innovative things with that book, but about the product placement’ (Richfeb. 2008)
Kathi Kirby, the purchasing manager at Powell’s, which carries ‘Cathy’s Book’ had said that due to the product placement being a ‘new thing’, they had yet to set a policy on it. She does, however, believe book lovers will see a lot more product placement in the future and encourages a buyer beware approach (Baker 2008). Some publishers, such as Annie Bloom’s Books, already have a strong stance on product placement and in particular books aimed at children.
Around the same time, a book series called ‘Mackenzie Blue’ from HarperCollins Children’s Books were being aimed at 8-12 year old girls. Product placement was the plan for the books from the outset. The author, Tina Wells, was chief executive and founder of Buzz Marketing Group which advises consumer product companies on how to sell to pre-teens and teenagers. It is difficult to find information on the success of this series since reviews are limited, and sales information more so. However, Wells, who allegedly founded Buzz Marketing at sixteen, had high ambitions for the series. She had sought a tie-in with a music company and in enticing sponsorship from companies in exchange for references of their ‘philanthropic’ initiatives. These do not seem to have materialised as yet.
The adult market is not safe either. The most obvious reference would be Ian Fleming, and his British spy, James Bond. The phrase ‘Shaken, not stirred’ immediately brings Martini to most of our minds, although many would argue this is just a character trait. It is merely to show the spy with a level of sophistication, and along with the taste of driving an Aston Martin, it works well. Fleming’s estate are adamant that the author did not receive any compensation for mentioning brands such as Cartier numerous times, although it has become shamelessly blatant in recent years in the movie adaptations such as Omega in the 2006 ‘Casino Royale’.
Whether it is author preference, or an undisclosed deal, sometimes the authenticity of a character is in doubt. Stieg Laarson’s ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ was Apple brand heavy. Every character used an Apple Mac: the reporter, those in his office, and the hacker, Lisbeth Salander. There was notable backlash, since hackers were unlikely to use an Apple Mac, and more realistically would use a custom built deck running some hybrid of Linux. The film adaptations capitalised on this link, and Apple features so highly that it could have been another character in the plot. In addition, the main character, Blomkvist, organises the overview of the family he is researching by means of a software package. The virtues of this package are written down, and even the URL to the website is given. This exposition was not required for the story, and appears to be obtrusive.
More recently, the E.L.James book, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ gave Audi a staring role in her first book and all the sequels. The books, collectively, have become one of the best-selling book series in history. Together they have sold more than 100 million copies in ebook and in print.
Rob Donnell from Brand Arc, a branded entertainment firm, stated at the time that this was an instance where a branded tie-in is driven by product attributes and how they can be weaved into a story’s plot (Parekah. 2012).
The Audi has now become synonymous with the franchise, and even though the author, James, was alleged not to have been paid initially to feature the brand, it would be interesting to see if any money is exchanged in any future novels involving these characters. An example of the text which not only promotes Audi, it also criticises another popular model of car in the process:
I can drive the Audi in high-heels! At 12:55pm precisely, I pull into my garage at Escala and park in bay five. How many bays does he own? The Audi SUV and R8 are there, along with two smaller Audi SUVs …hmmm. I check my seldom-worn mascara in the light-up vanity mirror on my visor. Didn’t have one of these in the Beetle. (James. 2011).
In this modern age there is another factor to look at in the publishing industry: Ebooks. This gives advertisers huge scope to move into this market more aggressively than ever. In 2014, a new ebook called, ‘Find Me, I’m yours’ by Hilary Carlip was released. It was a sponsored-content vehicle from RosettaBooks and by Cumberland Packaging Company who are the manufacturer of the artificial sweetener, Sweet ’N’ Low. It is alleged the company paid approximately $1.3 million for numerous positive references throughout the book (The Times. 2014). In addition to this, it created various multimedia marketing opportunities online; there were thirty sites, social media accounts, and web videos based on the book. Much like in TV and in movies, this begins to blur the lines between art and commerce and could push through a new business model for publishers.
Caroline Goldsmith, founder of Red Button Publishing, was genuinely surprised by the large sum of money exchanged in this deal. She said:
As books find their way online and in digital spheres, it is inevitable that this would happen… I can see how mentioning a product 36 times in a novel would be enticing for authors and publishers… However, if this became the norm, big companies would not throw money at debut novels. The money would go on the big-hitters already pulling in cash from their fan-bases (Erik. 2014)
Goldsmith’s words are a stark warning for those who believe the concept of product placement will enrich our literary culture. What it might cause is untold damage in an already struggling industry for writers.
Bobby Trichenor, owner of Annie Bloom’s Books disagrees with Goldsmith. He said: ‘As writers fight over meagre freelance dollars and non-royalties from their poorly marketed and poorly selling books … why shouldn’t authors take advantage? Everyone else is doing it?’ (Baker. 2008).
Some authors have become quite outspoken with this practice, and non-repenting with their deals with the dark-side. As well as Weldon, William Boyd wrote numerous articles proclaiming his lack of remorse over signing a deal with Land Rover. Boyd was reportedly paid a low six-figure sum for a 17,000 word story called ‘The Vanishing Game’ (Flood. 2014). The story was available as an ebook through Amazon and Apple. It was also offered as an interactive reading experience through social network site, Tumblr. For example, when a reader selects a keyword like ‘river’, they get the image of a Land Rover driving through a river. It is somewhat depressing to think that a reader can no longer use their imagination to picture the scene and would require the need of a branded clip to engage with the text. Boyd had a similar reaction to Weldon, he said in a 2014 Guardian article:
I have no idea how I’ll be viewed – and I don’t really care to be honest … I’d recommend any novelist to do it if they had the chance … If I was approached to write a Batman movie I would assume it would feature Batman. there is no difference.’ (Flood. 2014).
Author Bill Fitzhugh also came under fire in 2005 when his book, ‘Cross Dressing’ featured product placement. Fitzhugh approached a whisky brand prior to publication to replace a non-branded drink that was in the book to their own brand. They accepted and compensated the author with cases of single-malt. Fitzhugh defends his decision by stating the book already had those scenes in there, he had not added the drinking scenes to accommodate the product as that would be ‘selling out’. He added the irony since the book lampoons the advertising industry, unfortunately most missed the joke. (Fitzhugh. 2005).
Not all product placement in fiction is seen as problematic. Author Anna Funder wrote a short story in 2012 for the Australian pearl company, Paspaley. Funder stated she had full creative freedom and the story never made a single reference to pearls. The fact that the story was a product of a collaboration is also disclosed in the ebook.
Research commissioned by The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society and compiled by Queen Mary, University of London, found that the median income for professional authors in 2013 was a lot less than minimum wage, approximately £10,432 (Clark. 2015). It is little wonder that some authors find no trouble accepting deals and commissions from brands. Author Sophie Hannah said: ‘I’d think of it kind of like writing an advert, but writing as good a story as possible, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all.’ (Flood. 2014).
Technology also plays a part in advertising. Amazon refers to certain Fire tablet and e-readers as ‘Kindle with Special Offers’. The ‘special offers’ they entice you with are merely advertisements and appear as screensavers, on the lock screens, and at the bottom of the home screen. More blatant than product placement in the text, it is still altering the experience for the reader. In order to remove the adverts you would have to part with a one-off payment of approximately £15. The adverts subsidise the cost of the hardware, therefore one with adverts cost slightly less than one without. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief Executive said: ‘We’re working hard to make sure that anyone who wants a Kindle can afford one’ (Shead. 2011). He is less considerate to the authors, independent publishers, and bookshops who suffer at the hands of Amazon’s pricing monopoly of the publishing industry.
In an age with ebooks and social network, cross media-marketing tie-ins appear far more attractive to brands and it can increase reader engagement. Straight advertising, such as what is seen on Kindle tablets or bound into books, is seen as intrusive by the reader and is likely to provoke a negative reaction; a technique that seems to be accepted in the glossy magazines, the adverts are what make those magazine exist on the shelves since it is the revenue that ultimately pays for the publication. However, in literature, product placement is usually more subtle which can be perceived as more manipulative as the marketers can tap into the emotional connection that people have with the characters. In the advent of media cross-overs we perhaps should assume all media content is in fact branded; the only question is the level of transparency.
It seems to be dangerous territory. While it can add additional revenue for both writers and publishers, there would be no doubt that the top selling books would command the highest prices. The struggling writer would still be ‘suffering for their art’ on the sidelines, however there would be no rules against them approaching a brand themselves to include their products. There could come a time where instead of pitching to a publisher they would be pitching their book to a cosmetic firm, or a luxury car manufacturer.
John Beyer from Media Watch UK fears brands are ‘exploiting the subconscious’ and rejects the idea that consumers are savvy enough to know when they are being marketed to. (Duffy. 2005). Collectively, we are aware of advertising on the side of buses, on the underground, bus stops, in magazines, newspapers, on the radio, TV, films. We have long accepted the constant battering our brains get from non-stop advertising. It is in books we can slow down, relax, and let our minds seek refuge from it all. Story-telling works by enticing you into a magical world where you accept the unreal as real. It leaves our built-in scepticism to one side and lets us be swept long by the narrative. Would we be aware that the author of our loved protagonist who had a penchant for a certain brand of chocolate bar, or a special brand of footwear was paid to insert these in to deliberately sell to us? Perhaps books should make the reader aware by slapping a sticker on the front of the book, much like the product placement symbol that is at the beginning of television programmes (and which is easily missed). Books are the only time we don’t expect, or want to be sold to. Without any disclosure, readers do not get that choice.
Where is the line drawn? A writer stating a character drives a Volvo has certain connotations, likewise if the protagonists wears a Rolex, but what if a brand paid to radically alter a characteristic of the character, or plot to suit their insidious corporate agenda? How different would The Devil Wears Prada be if Converse came along and wanted it to be The Devil Wears Converse? There is a big difference between using a brand to highlight a character and using them to promote products. Fiction demands a certain level of authenticity, if authors begin to be a mouthpiece for a brand it could devalue their work since advertising is just an illusion of real.
There are still people fighting for the integrity and virtues of fiction as something worth paying for, but it is the consumer demand of cheapness that is the driving force for product placement to become a permanent resident in books. And, when that happens it will be a sad day.
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Pook and the Palimpsest 