The history of television advertising – and especially product placement – is kind of interesting.
In the 1940s, shows were often sponsored by companies, so viewers could tune in to The Philco TV Playhouse or The Texaco Star Theater or The Voice of Firestone. Full sponsorship fell out of favor in the 1950s, to be replaced by “in-show” commercials, where actors would suddenly break out of character to endorse a product. For instance, two neighbors might go to the backyard to start a grill for a cookout, and one character would observe how fast and evenly the charcoal fired up. The other character would agree, then turn to the camera and tell the audience it was because he used Kingsford Charcoal, “the very best money could buy”. He’d pitch the product for 20-30 seconds, and then return to character.
This, too, had fallen out of fashion by the 1960s, when the standard 30 second commercial we know (and hate?) became the norm. But this put prop masters in a pickle: advertising often wouldn’t be sold until after a show had been filmed. Prop masters had no idea if Coke or Pepsi would end up buying ads for the show, so it didn’t make sense for a character to prominently use either drink. After all, if Beaver Cleaver was seen enjoying a Pepsi, Coke probably wouldn’t want to advertise on the show, right?
The solution was fictional brands. Since these fake products only existed in films and TV, there was no need to worry about irritating potential advertisers. Fake products also, in a way, liberated creators of movies and TV: although in most cases companies didn’t mind having their products used in the media, negative portrayals of their product could trigger a legal case over trademark use. For example, a TV show about a serial rapist and killer who loves Pepsi might anger Pepsi executives enough to sue for making their product look bad. So, by using fake products, this issue is avoided completely. And, in some locales, “product placement” might be banned completely. Until recently, Canada and the UK prohibited the practice on television, so fake products weren’t an option; they were the only option.
Some of these fake products were totally original, and looked different from any actual product on the market. Usually, however, the products looked a lot like a popular product. And no fake product ever looked more like its real-world counterpart, and was used in more productions, than Morley cigarettes.
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Philip Morris introduced the Marlboro brand in 1924 as a cigarette for women. Like most women’s cigarettes of the day, Marlboros had filters. In fact, Marlboros originally came with red filters to disguise lipstick marks! Since only women’s cigarettes had filters, men shunned them. So, for a long time, men only smoked unfiltered cigarettes and women mostly smoked filtered cigarettes.