The Smoldering Symbiosis: Hollywood, Big Tobacco and the Rise of Product Placement

• In Event: Selling in America: Advertising, Campaigns, Recruitment, and Product Placement

Abstract

A Master Settlement Agreement in 1998 made public hundreds of confidential tobacco insider documents. These documents described the use of product placement tactics to influence unsuspecting viewers of films and television programming. This paper reports the first scholarly analysis of these documents related to product placement, and does so in the context of a process model of product placement. The results provide an important insider glimpse of efforts to promote tobacco through entertainment media.

Authors

• Laleah Fernandez, Michigan State University

• Charles Salmon, Michigan State University