The results suggest that the characteristics surrounding product placements in Hollywood films have not changed. In fact, the characteristics have remained largely consistent. The mode and prominence of placements over the ninety year span examined exemplify what Gupta and Lord (1998) found to be the most effective product placements: visual and clear. As the content analysis results showed, 85.19% of the placements recorded were visual and 97.22% of the placements recorded were clear. The placements also followed the guidelines that product placement practitioners set out in Karrh, McKee, and Pardun’s (2003) study, specifically that the placement should show the product in use and omit competing brands. The content analysis revealed that 54.63% of the placements showed the product in use by a character and that 83.33% of placements omitted competing brands. The majority (47.22%) of placements were of low relevance to the plot, however, departing from DeLorme and Reid’s (1999) suggestion that placements that are relevant to the plot are more effective. Thus, the results suggest that while scholarly research only recently revealed specific characteristics that make a placement successful, placement practitioners have been employing these techniques, for the most part, since at least the 1920s.
Instead of suggesting that the characteristics of product placement have changed over the last ninety years to spark the increase of scholarly research surrounding the practice, the results of the content analysis suggest that the number of placements has increased. While it seems a natural conclusion that the increase in product placement was the catalyst for the increase in research, the opposite could as easily be true. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial had the highest instance of product placement (29). This is frequently cited as the first major use of product placement in film. It is possible, however, that the sudden notice of product placement following E.T. brought a wider knowledge of the practice to filmmakers. It is possible that these filmmakers saw the practice as more acceptable since it became the subject of public scrutiny. Thus, this research has raised the question of whether the increase in product placement sparked the increase in research or if the scholarly research sparked the increase of product placement. This merits further study.
Another interesting finding of this study was the extent of product placement in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1952 Best Picture Winner, The Greatest Show on Earth. This film follows a fictional cast of the world-famous Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s Circus. While the plot and characters are fictional, the circus is not. The entire movie plugs the circus with numerous instances of the circus’s name being on display. The name of the film is the circus’s slogan. Thus, this film is an example of major product placement and it was filmed thirty years before E.T. It follows the television advertising model of the day by having one major sponsor present throughout the entirety of the program. Instead of the Texaco Star Theater or Colgate Comedy Hour, it is the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s film. It would be useful to examine the terms that the circus and Paramount worked out for the film.
A final interesting finding from the research is that there was an instance of product placement in each of the films, which were not chosen for their use of product placement. This means that products have been placed in films since the early days of Hollywood, and these placements have been very similar in their portrayal. It would be useful to expand the current study to examine all of the top grossing films of each decade. It would also be useful to examine the top grossing films from each year in a similar study to get a more accurate picture of the product placement landscape of the last ninety years.
