In the World of Celebrities, Product Placement Opportunities Are Everywhere

I recently found a great product placement source, and I feel kind of silly because I’m not sure how I missed it before. Not having much luck (or the attention span) of my own in spotting any new product placement in the past week’s TV shows or new movie releases, I decided to search out some secondary sources. Like most other Gen Y blogger, I went right to Google to see what’s been going on in the product placement world. After searching keywords “product placement,” I found this useful site appropriately entitled, “Product Placement News.” It came up as the third result after Wikipedia and Howstuffworks.com. Again, I’m not sure how I haven’t run into this one before. I’m almost embarrassed to call myself a product placement fanatic.

Anyway, this site is set up like a blog and contains articles on everything product placement, with Jeff Greenfield as the primary author. Articles range from films to events to music, and cover several different angles of product placement, pretty much any branded entertainment in the Hollywood sphere. My blog is simply amateur compared to this one… not that I ever claimed it not to be. But hey, I’m just a girl with a passion.

One of the more recent topics that caught my eye was about Wolfgang Puck. Apparently, it has recently been discovered that one of his caterers has Hepatitis A and may have exposed several celebrities to it. Greenfield estimates that the infected employee has worked 14 celebrity parties catered by Wolfgang in the past month, the most recent being a Sports Illustrated party celebrating this year’s swimsuit issue. To me, this screams crisis management, but the geniuses at Product Placement News found a way to put a relative spin on it. Ofcourse no one would want to place any Wolfgang Punk branded products in their show or film now, but what about the placements that have already taken place? Now media vehicles with Wolfgang Puck products may find the opposite effect of placement. In essence past product placement efforts of the celebrity chef are now worthless. A subsequent article suggests that marketers use Twinrix, a vaccine for both Hepatitis A and B, in product placement endeavors to offset the controversy and take advantage of the buzz surrounding it. Lastly, the site named Wolfgang Puck the “Worst Product Placement of the Week.”