Few people know what an animated Dorito would look like, but if product placement in cartoons takes off, you can bet there will be a committee somewhere trying to figure it out. Product placement in movies and television isn’t new, but product placement in cartoons is, and it may be coming to Canada first.

Corus-owned Nelvana animation studios, in partnership with Teletoon, is currently pitching product placement opportunities for an animated series that is expected to launch in September 2004.

The series, aimed at eight- to 12-year-olds, is titled The Mall and will follow the lives of six teenagers experiencing their first part-time jobs at a local shopping centre. According to Jocelyn Hamilton, Nelvana’s VP of creative product, the project is still in the early stages. ‘We’re still not sure whether or not it’s even possible, but Teletoon is open to it, which is the number one thing that would stop it.’

Until recently, long production lead times have prevented any type of product placement in animation. A typical cartoon series would spend four years in production, in a life cycle that has little in common with new product and marketing cycles.

‘New technologies and a willingness among producers have started to change that,’ says Teletoon’s director of marketing and promotions Leslie Krueger.

So far, however, there are few cases where it’s been successfully pulled off. A single tube of Colgate toothpaste digitally pasted into an episode of Global’s prime-time cartoon Bob and Margaret last year remains an oft-cited example of quick-and-dirty product placement.

Animation could have a unique appeal for advertisers because of what Krueger calls ‘the evergreen factor.’ Unlike live-action movies or television programs, animation often has a long lifespan, which means product placement could go a long way.

Krueger says she has pitched the idea to a number of clients and has seen ‘a fair bit of interest,’ but no clients are on board as of yet.

Outside of Quebec, which prohibits advertising of any kind to kids under 12, Canada has no legal guidelines on non-declared advertising to kids.

The Broadcast Code for Advertising to Children – produced by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) in association with Advertising Standards Canada and endorsed by the CRTC – applies only to advertising, not programming. Neither the CAB or the CRTC have so far been called upon to address product placement in programming, but consumer complaints could change that.

The situation is similar in the U.S., where the Children’s Advertising Review Unit, a self-regulatory body with major weight in the industry, may or may not prohibit different kinds of product placement, depending on who’s doing the reading.

So far, little or no product placement has appeared in American tween programming. Los Angeles-based animation studio DIC Entertainment announced plans for a division devoted to the idea last year, but the division has made no new announcements since and has yet to put anything on the market.

Hamilton is careful to point out that Nelvana is currently working with Teletoon to ‘figure out how we can make this happen and not cross the ethics border.’

For starters, product placement will not feature in story lines and Hamilton says they will avoid having characters interact with products. Instead, product placement will be limited to ‘atmospheric elements’ such as storefronts or signage.

‘[The program] kind of calls out for it,’ Hamilton says. ‘It’s called The Mall…. There is a huge possibility of making it seem like a real mall.’

Krueger, on the other hand, sees more potential.

‘There are the obvious product placement opportunities such as store signage in the background, but also what we are calling ’embedded product placement,’ where characters interact with the product which is designated as a regular component of the series. [For example,] a particular brand of sportswear worn by a key character…a particular game console compulsively played by a character…a particular clothing brand being sought after by the shopaholic fashionista of the series…. The opportunities for embedded product placement are endless.’