Pressure for placement

High end advertisers are starting to push for product placement on magazine spreads and covers south of the border. According to an article in AdAge, Lexus is openly asking for exposure for its pricey automobiles. It's not clear yet whether this is a straight payment option or whether the advertiser is making it a condition of signing a contract; perhaps a little of each.

Deborah Wahl Meyer, Lexus division’s vice president of marketing, says product placement is common in movies and TV shows and she doesn't see why magazines should be different:

“In TV, product placement has really stepped up,” she said. “That’s paid for and accepted by the public. It has become pretty widespread. There’s a lot of opportunity to do that in the print world, too.”

So far, in Canada, the practice is not evident or obvious, although there was a kerfuffle a while back when Flare featured an advertiser's car on the cover, with a model straddling the hood ornament.

However, what happens in the U.S. tends to trickle up.

(This emerging development, comes on the heels of major companies now formalizing "ad-pull" arrangements, demanding to see contentious or related edit, something that used to be insisted upon only by cigarette manufacturers. There are slippery slopes in every direction one looks.)