When the Alliance Atlantis feature Foolproof hits screens across this country on Oct. 3, stars Ryan Reynolds, David Suchet and Kristin Booth will be sharing the screen with several strategically placed Toyotas, bags of Frito Lay chips, Pizza Hut boxes and Krispy Kreme doughnuts, thanks to deals struck between those companies and the producers.

‘In one scene Ryan walks in with a pizza box, and we said wouldn’t it be great if it was a Pizza Hut box?’ says associate producer Andrea Mann. ‘There’s a scene with doughnuts and Ryan interacts with them and we thought Krispy Kreme would love that. Why not have Ryan playing with their doughnuts?’

Much of what’s on the screen, noticeable or not, is there because of some sort of deal, she says. ‘It’s general practice’ at AAC, says Mann. ‘The art department would do it even if we didn’t. They would read the script and go ‘Ohmigod. We need computers. We need alcohol for this bar scene.”

To get those computers, drinks, or whatever, filmmakers call companies such as MMI Product Placement or Premier Entertainment Services, specialists in movie tie-ins and placement deals.

Tie-ins are up sharply in Canadian movies from seven years ago, when Premier president David Newton opened the Toronto branch of the L.A. company. Back then, he had to educate Canadian dealmakers from scratch, and also ‘assure them that product placement isn’t illegal.’

Since then, Newton estimates there has been a tenfold increase in the number of Canadian companies that are routinely leveraging movie properties to promote their products.

They’re doing so partly because small-screen advertising is under attack by ad-skipping PVR technology and because, according to a recent Statistics Canada report, cinema attendance is at a 41-year high. Meanwhile, Canadian films are under the gun to make more money at the box office, which stands to boost investment from the private sector.

‘You may be seeing more and more of these [arrangements],’ says Mann. ‘The larger, familiar brand-name companies are eager to put their more visible products into films because they realize ‘Oh, there’s more money in this film.’ It’s going to be seen by more people than, say, Canadian films have historically.’

Another driving force, says Kevin September, Premier’s director of business development, is the presence of so much film production in Canada.

Among the high-profile productions Premier has worked with recently – on behalf of a number of clients which he declined to identify – are Shall We Dance?, which wrapped production in Winnipeg Aug. 31 and stars Jennifer Lopez, Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon, and Welcome to Mooseport, starring Gene Hackman and Ray Romano, which wrapped shooting in and around Toronto in early July.

Canadian clothier Le Chateau enjoyed a successful tie-in with the Renee Zellweger/Ewan McGregor comedy Down with Love in May, marketing a line of clothes adapted from the ’60s-era costumes seen in the film. The line of 25 garments sold out six weeks after hitting the racks.

Even TV channels are getting in on the action. CHUM Television, which supported production of Foolproof by prelicensing the English Canada broadcast rights, ran a branded promo trailer in front of The Matrix Reloaded and will promote the film on air closer to the release date. All ad materials for Foolproof will be CHUM/MuchMusic branded.

Other channels have used Hollywood releases to piggyback their own promotions, such as Showcase Action’s leveraging of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Timed for the movie’s release on July 2, a free month’s Showcase Action service was offered to everyone who purchased a Star Choice satellite system at RadioShack. Additionally, Showcase Action heightened ‘Arniemania’ with a simultaneous ‘Arnie Double Bill’ movie night.

Are these movie tie-ins likely to resonate effectively with consumers? Peter Heywood, VP of brand strategy at Toronto-headquartered Watt Global Consultancy, says yes.

‘I think they’re really clever [in that] they obviously recognize that there are features and attributes in the film that people might want to adopt in real life. People, especially young people, are tuning out ads,’ Heywood points out. ‘But there’s an emotional connection to the really successful brands that goes beyond simply what they offer as a product or a service.’

Lending urgency to the spread of product integration is the threat from ad-skipping technology. Although PVR penetration in Canada has yet to be officially measured, Ian MacLean, VP at Montreal-based iTV Lab, estimates that it now stands at about 45,000 to 50,000 households, with approximately 1.7 million south of the border.

A recent Toronto survey of overall TV viewers concluded that 61% of PVR owners frequently skip advertisements. That number rises to 79% in the 20-to-29 age group and to a whopping 83% among those aged 15 to 18, according to Phil Hart, president of Toronto’s MMI Product Placement.

Thanks to the results of an attitudinal study conducted by ACNielsen late last year – said to be the first of its kind in Canada – Hart says MMI now has empirical proof that product-specific tie-ins work.

‘[Participants] responded positively to product placement in principle and said that it adds realism to scenes and characters,’ he says. ‘So the bottom line is that product placement increases brand loyalty by validating the purchase decisions of users, especially when favorite stars are seen using or consuming a brand’s product.’

Hart is using the findings to pitch his agency’s services to potential customers. One of these is Canadian Tire, a spokesman for which confirms that the Canadian retailer’s first-ever product placement deal with MMI is currently being negotiated, but declines to give details.

A big part of the job for agencies like MMI and Premier is to calm their clients’ fears about getting involved in product placement or brand integration. September explains to his clients how closely Premier examines all opportunities to ensure that brands wind up in safe on-screen environments.

KremeKo, for example, which Vancouver-based marketing VP Judi Richardson says is just beginning to consider feature film product integration, was offered the chance to showcase its Krispy Kreme doughnuts in an upcoming teen-aimed movie called Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. But the answer was no after MMI read the script and found foul language and pot smoking, which, says Richardson, ‘is not the image we want to project.’

‘We call it ‘policing the brand,” says September, who describes what can go wrong when brand managers with stars in their eyes don’t check the script. He recalls that someone in the U.S. jumped at the seemingly plum opportunity to have Pledge furniture polish mentioned by the stars of the hit TV series Will & Grace. But the plum turned into a gigantic lemon when the characters implied that spraying Pledge on precious antiques might ruin their finish and diminish their value.

They had a similar problem at Foolproof when it was looking for coffee placement, says Mann. ‘A lot of coffee gets spilled in our film. People are constantly being burned by coffee, so no company wanted us to use their brand.’ *

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