With February sweeps hitting small screens this month and a summer of blockbuster screeners lurking just around the corner, something else might be coming right along with them – more product placements popping up in our entertainment options.

Think Doritos and Survivor. Or Heineken and Spider-Man. Big-name titles tend to attract big-name sponsors that are eager to have their products slipped into shows rather than advertised around them.

Only, that’s the problem. With the advent of spot-skipping technology like TiVo, a slew of advertisers are looking for ways to gain unbleemable awareness for their products. And Doritos and Heineken may have gone the exact wrong way about it – by hitting viewers over the head with obvious product placements.

‘Some people treat product placement like a B-52 bomber pilot – they’re frustrated with the fact that they’re not breaking through ad clutter, so they’re trying to integrate their products with the content,’ says Jeff Spriet, president of Toronto-based branded entertainment company chokolat. ‘But they’re doing it in a way that’s so obvious and they’re oblivious to the content itself. It’s like ‘Everyone saw our logo. Mission accomplished.”

Indeed, both buyers and marketers are fast realizing that the new product placement isn’t about going for mass eyeballs. Like everything else in advertising, product placement is evolving to quality over quantity, which may just mean the subtler and more strategic the placement, the better.

Hit your viewers over the head with an obvious placement and they feel insulted, even turned off of your product and its message. Too subtle and it’s wallpaper – viewers can completely miss it. The sweet spot is somewhere in between, where you can subtly sway your target to the benefits of your product and even get some buzz going.

‘You need to think carefully about how integrated you can make your placement,’ says Neale Halliday, senior communications director for Toronto-based OMD Canada. ‘The more integrated it is to the storyline, the less it looks as if I’m being sold to. It’s not an ad. You can’t think of it like an ad.’

So how do you think about it? Well, ask a marketer and you’ll get the simple answer – be strategic, line up your brand aspirations with that of the shows and integrate, integrate, integrate.

Even broadcasters such as Fox are getting the message – kind of. The second season of American Idol still features some head-hitting product placements from Coca-Cola, AT&T and Ford, but the net has scaled back from last season’s overload and toned down many of the secondary placements.

Sony Ericsson has made a similar adjustment to its product placement strategy over the last year. It’s moving towards more strategic placements that show the functionality of its products rather than just placing them in blockbuster venues. Most recently, its phones appeared in the James Bond flick Die Another Day which showed off the phone’s photo-taking capability as well as its ability to send and receive pictures.

‘There are so many products being placed in all kinds of movies and shows that unless you can really show how they’re being used and identified, it’s not worth it,’ says North Carolina-based Nicki Csellak-Claeys, marketing communications manager for Sony Ericsson. ‘It’s got to be part of the plotline and showed in a significant enough way to be noticed.’

Csellak-Claeys adds that even though Bond films are known for their placements, clutter wasn’t an issue. ‘In any type of high-tech or sci-fi movie, people look for the gadgets, as in Bond,’ she says.

The Body Shop Canada also strived for a functional product placement when it signed on to be part of Popstars: The One this season. Its products appear on screen and are given to the finalists to use in prepping themselves for their final tryouts.

‘It offers the products in a real-life situation,’ says Laine Ferguson, EVP of retail for Toronto-based Body Shop Canada. For example, finalists were given a welcome kit filled with Body Shop products when they arrived at their accommodation during rehearsals.

But for both The Body Shop and Sony Ericsson, a lot of the real product placement action happened off-screen. ‘Product placements can’t just stand there by themselves,’ says Chris Geddes, director of sales and marketing for Lone Eagle Entertainment, the Toronto-based company producing Popstars. ‘You need to build a promotional program around it.’

Thus all five of the show’s sponsors – The Body Shop, Rogers AT&T Wireless, Snapple, Delta Chelsea Hotels and Pillsbury Mini Pops – are featured on the Popstars Web site. The Body Shop goes even further by tying into a contest dangling prize packs brimming with product, as well as sponsoring a contest to attend the final taping.

Sony Ericsson, in turn, had two major promotions surrounding its Bond placement: in the U.S., consumers received a ‘Spy Pack’ containing accessories and software to download images from the movie when they bought a phone. In Canada, consumers got a chance to win a trip to London, U.K. – Bond HQ, of course.

‘It was about activating the placement to create more awareness,’ says Csellak-Claeys. ‘You focus on leveraging your strategic placements, rather than trying to get as many placements as you can out there.’

This off-screen element allows the marketer to deliver the ad-communications messages in a non-intrusive environment – which shows a little respect for the audience.

‘If you’re in somebody else’s living room, it’s not a good idea to throw up on the carpet,’ says OMD’s Halliday. ‘Respect where you are and what your brand can bring to the property and evaluate the whole opportunity on that basis. It isn’t just eyeballs. It’s about relevant exposure that contributes to your communications objectives.’