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Hyatt among advertisers that find room in documentary poking fun at product placement

Chicago-based hotel chain finds buzz surrounding film to be worth the risk

This is a story about product placement in a documentary film deriding product placement, paid for entirely by product placement.

Though the film takes an all-out jab at this advertising trend, advertisers are on board. Morgan Spurlock’s “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” opens Friday, and it’s the real deal.

Among the companies that participated, Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp. paid $700,000 to “sponsor” the film, knowing it was buying into a documentary devoted to how stupid and awkward product placement can be. (Nearly every interview in the movie takes place at a Sheetz gas station where every beverage other than POM Wonderful is blurred.)

“There will be a lot of questions from people like yourself about why we participated,” said John Wallis, Hyatt’s global head of marketing and brand strategy.

It may be a risky move by Hyatt, but worth it for the buzz, Wallis said. It’s harder for advertisers to catch the public’s attention, and not every online video goes viral. And consumers aren’t watching TV the way they used to.

“There are more and more attempts to avoid the commercial break,” said James Pokrywczynski, associate professor at the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University in Milwaukee. “We use the remote control to change channels, we DVR shows or edit out the commercials or fast-forward through them.”

As a result, spending for product placements in TV, film, Internet and video games more than tripled between 2004 and 2009, from $1.1 billion to $3.6 billion, according to Stamford, Conn.-based media research firm PQ Media.

Some movies are saturated with product placement. The 2006 film “The Departed” hosted more than four dozen brands, according to a study in the May 2011 issue of Journal of Marketing.

“If you see how much attention people pay to a commercial, it’s almost nothing. But with a movie or a show, you get more attention, you pay less money and you are involved with amazing artists,” said Ricardo De La Blanca Brigati, CEO and founder of DLB Group, a self-described “global marketing services integrator.”

But some say gauging whether product placement works is difficult.

“Inherently we know that it’s good, but we don’t have it all figured out yet,” said Bob Liodice, CEO of the Association of National Advertisers Inc. “It isn’t as scientific as we’d like it to be.”

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-04-21/business/ct-biz-0422-product-placement-20110421_1_pq-media-placement-association-of-national-advertisers