Sarah Winter

Product Placement, 2007

3x 1,1m x 1,8m

project for public spaces

Product Placement originated as the law in Germany concerning the ban of cigarette advertisements in newspapers, magazines and on the internet came into force. The work combines the topic of the ban with the idea of Product Placment. Since the ban, which also forbids the sponsoring of border-crossing events such as the Formula One races, companies have invented new strategies to bypass this regulation. Graphic arts are employed which irritate the company's logo without the company's name, in other instances special editions come into practice. These strategies follow the rules of Product Placement rather closely. Therefore, I intended to stage a subtle intervention, a legal Product Placement, to test the viewing habit of the consumer. I chose the paradox of staging three "advertisments" - of camel, marlboro, and gauloise - for a public space, the last space where cigarette advertisements are still permitted. Clearly, Product Placement doesn’t mimic the strategies of actual product placement, but rather examines the ritual significance of posters in public spaces.