|
When Baz Luhrmann’s
production of Puccini’s opera La Bohème opens at New York’s Broadway
Theater on Dec. 8, audience members will notice many of the liberties he’s
taken. Luhrmann’s Bohème is set in Paris’s Latin Quarter,
like the original. But it’s Paris
in 1957, not the 1830s. The look of the production is a mix of film noir
visuals and Henri Cartier-Bresson photographs, blended with vintage
postcards.
The set is made of
partly deconstructed buildings that shift to mimic the effect of a moving
motion picture camera. Perhaps less apparent: the product placement. Swiss
luxury-goods maker Montblanc, a unit of Cie. Financière Richemont AG, and
Piper-Heidsieck champagne, owned by Rémy Cointreau SA of France, are
providing marketing help for the show. In return, their names and logos are
featured prominently in the set: a Montblanc sign sits on a building’s
second story; a Piper-Heidsieck poster adorns a wall.
La Bohème’s
producers say it’s a way to extend the marketing budget for a show rumored
to cost US$6.5-million to put on. The average ticket will cost about US$100.
Jeffrey Seller, one of those producers, hired an outside agent to find
marketing partners for the production.
In return for
having its name prominently displayed onstage, Montblanc will put La
Bohème posters and photographs of the cast in its 49 U.S. boutiques.
It’s also paying for magazine advertising and direct mail marketing pushing
the production. Montblanc also sells a pen named Bohème.
Rémy Cointreau is
also launching displays in New
York liquor stores twinning its
Piper-Heidsieck champagne and La Bohème. The company will donate the
champagne for parties connected with the production, including its run in
San Francisco — now almost finished — and the New York opening. In addition,
Piper-Heidsieck will be served at the opera’s Cafe Momus in Act II, although
nobody has said whether the play’s broke, tubercular, bohemian characters
will be ordering it. Or how they could afford it.
Product placement
is non-existent in the theatre business so far. But Mr. Luhrmann and
Catherine Martin, the production designer who is married to him, are
familiar with it. The idea for this deal may have come from them. The
American productions of La Bohème will mark the third and fourth
times they’ve put on this particular show; they mounted the opera in Sydney
in 1993 and again in 1996. In their first film, Strictly Ballroom, a
key scene in the first act unfolds around a massive rooftop Coca-Cola sign,
some version of which has appeared in every one of their movies. In Romeo
and Juliet, Mr. Luhrmann and Ms. Martin used signs and posters as visual
jokes and commentary. Advertising imagery was also important in their movie
Moulin Rouge. Ms. Martin said she was careful to include advertising
from companies that were in business in Paris in 1957 in her stage design.
Product placement
is already big business in film and television. The forthcoming James Bond
movie, Die Another Day, for example, has deals for US$50 million in
marketing support and product placement with automaker Ford, cosmetics
company Revlon and Swatch. There are also agreements with videogame company
Electronic Arts and Visa credit cards. Finally, in this picture, Bond has
forsaken Smirnoff vodka in his shaken-not-stirred martinis for Finlandia.
Procter & Gamble
has a “product integration deal” with CBS, as well as its subsidiary
networks MTV and the American version of the Discovery channel.
Product placement’s
reach and frequency are growing. But expressing that growth in dollar terms
is impossible.
“How big a business
is it? That’s the Holy Grail. Nobody knows,” said Hank Kim, editor of a new
newsletter titled Madison And Vine which covers the confluence of
entertainment and marketing. “Some companies are trying to figure out some
means of measuring the size of the product placement business and how
effective it is as a marketing tool, but nobody has a working model yet.
“We haven’t done
any product placement in our productions, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t
be interested,” said Nisha Lewis of the Canadian Opera Company. “Sun Life
sponsors our surtitles, and they get their logo on the surtitle screen as
part of that deal. Our school tour in the spring is now the Zellers Ensemble
School Tour because Zellers underwrites it.” Members of the COC tour 50
grammar schools every spring with a program comprising an operatic take on
Brothers Grimm fairy tales by Dan Burry, and a 45-minute highlight version
of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. By contrast, New York’s Metropolitan
Opera Company does not have sponsors for its surtitles.
“We have had
opportunities come to us on a couple of occasions here in this market over
the last couple of years. But it’s not a major part of what we do,” said
Dave Newton, president of product placement firm Premier Entertainment
Services. His company has put together product placement deals for movies
and television productions including The Sopranos. “It’s not a major
part of what we do because the opportunities aren’t as abundant as the
number of filmed opportunities.”
This
product-placement Puccini could be facing other problems. Playbill Inc.,
which makes the programs handed out at Broadway theatres, has contracts
giving it the rights to all advertising at a venue. In the early 1980s,
Playbill demanded Cats alter its scenery to cover part of a poster
for a brand-name product that was part of the set.
And more recently,
the Victory Gardens Theater in
Chicago asked for 14 Nokia
cellphones and US$10,000 in cash for a show called Ariadne’s Thread.
Nokia said no.
While theatrical
product placement remains rare, Premier’s Mr. Newton didn’t rule out its
potential for growth: “You never know.” |
