Things have never been fair in love, war or product placement. Just ask Guinness: management in St James’s Gate must have felt pretty bitter when former US president Bill Clinton was photographed sipping a pint of Murphy’s during his trip to Ireland in 1995.

As the then leader of the free world sat in Cassidy’s bar in Dublin, the Guinness publicity gurus were probably rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of the priceless photo opportunity.

But they hadn’t bargained on the ingenuity of their counterparts at Murphy’s who allegedly smuggled a keg of their brew into the bar to sabotage Guinness’s moment in the limelight.

Now, with US president Barack Obama set to visit, savvy product placement gurus have been at it again, with Dulux reportedly helping to paint his ancestral home town of Moneygall.

But will the relaxing of product placement regulations by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland force brands to play by the rules and pay, rather than rely on one-upmanship and ingenuity, when it comes to getting exposure for brands?

This new era in product placement arrived in Britain earlier this year, and Nescafe¤ was one of the first big brands to jump aboard. It paid a whopping £100,000 (€113,000) to have its Dolce Gusto coffee machine feature on the set of ITV’s big budget flop, This Morning, for three months.

Industry sources estimate the new rules allowing product placement will bring in an extra £100 million in revenue to the commercial TV channels in Britain, while Irish channels could share up to €6 million.

However, the reaction has been lukewarm, probably because long before the new rules, brands have always found ways to get their products in front of the public.

Just like Murphy’s got one over on Guinness, the people at Corona bypassed the GAA’s commercial department with their very own ‘ambush marketing’ masterstroke, when two Cork players wore the beer brand’s logo on their boots during the 2005 All-Ireland hurling quarter-final.

The players involved were believed to have pocketed just €500 each for the deal, a fraction of the value of the publicity generated for the beer company in television, radio and newspaper coverage. However, while US television viewers are used to being bombarded with product placements, audiences here seem less enthusiastic.

Product placement is even facing a backlash in Hollywood, as director Morgan Spurlock, who took aim at McDonald’s in the documentary Super Size Me, has now set his sights on branded goods and their relationship with movie makers.

His latest film The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, due for release in the US next month, sees him try to fund his entire film through product placement, while exploring how brands are increasingly looking to place their products on television and movie sets.

The reasons are simple: the increase in popularity of Sky Plus devices, which allow viewers to fast-forward through ad breaks, and the growing numbers watching films and television over the internet, have meant fewer are being exposed to traditional advertising.

So, American Idol judges sit with glasses emblazoned with the Coke logo and James Bond roars around in anything from an Aston Martin to a Ford Bronco, while the baddies end up crashing into DHL trucks.

However, research in Britain has found audiences pretty ambivalent about the arrival of product placement on terrestrial TV.

While 73 per cent said they had noticed placements in US programmes, 70 per cent believe seeing a brand in a TV show or film will not change their perceptions of it, according to research by YouGov.

It will be interesting to see how advertising agencies compete with public relations firms as they look to get a bigger slice of the product placement pie. When it comes to brand exposure, advertising agencies tend to think in terms of how much money they need to throw at it.

Public relations firms, on the other hand, tend to explore how to help brands get their product into the forefront of the action, rather than paying for it to sit in the background hoping someone will notice.

Consumers have become desensitised to product placement and, despite the new dawn for such strategies in Ireland, brands will most likely favour a mix of placement and clever commando marketing to help them stand out.

Some advertisers and PR experts will no doubt go head to head to win new business, but the more savvy will most likely join forces. Product placements will be used, but the real victory will be in the clever ways the brand can leverage such placements.

So, while some brands will undoubtedly pay for the privilege of having their moment in the background of Fair City or beside the sofa on Ireland AM, when it comes to getting brand exposure, expect the real battles to continue to be waged using the art of guerrilla warfare.

Article printed in Sunday Business Post, Media and Marketing, 3^rd April 2011