Recently, a guy wrote me asking about the suit that Jay-Z wears in the Jay-Z HP commercial and then I noticed someone coming to ProHipHop from a search for "what watch does pharrell wear in h p commercial" referring to the Pharrell Williams HP ad.

Though I don’t think these were actual product placements in the "wearing it as advertisement sense", they are reminders of the power of product placement at a time when some folks are predicting that tv and film product placements will triple by 2010.

Although I’m not a big believer in such predictions, the report does
point out that, in the U.S., $1.5 billion was spent on film and tv
product placements in 2005.

Stuart Elliott goes into more details of the report.

In addition to previous ProHipHop posts, here’s a somewhat random assortment of links related to product placement I’ve been building up, for those who are interested:

NY Times – The Plot Is the Pitch
The pitfall of branded entertainment is the inability of many advertisers to understand the difference between deftly weaving a product into a plot line and ham-handedly pushing it to the point that they annoy or alienate consumers.

AdJab – An angel dies every time a blogger mentions a product
OK, so what I wrote in the headline isn’t really true. Two angels actually die.

ChasNote – Nearly 50% of Marketing Execs Have Paid for Placement

NY Times – Marketers Say They Pay for Play in News Media

MTV (from 2003) – Push The Courvoisier: Are Rappers Paid For Product Placement?
An article in October’s Fortune magazine referenced an Epic Records memo in which the company offered to place products in lyrics to B2K songs for a fee, later quoting an executive who said the same offer would be extended to "most of our pop acts."

By the way, still don’t know what suit Jay-Z was wearing but I remember noticing it as well and not just because you couldn’t see his face.  It’s a very, very nice suit.