Product placement is a relative new phenomenon in Sweden, but has been used in USA since the 1940s. Product placement means that a company shows its products or brands in, for example a movie or TV-production. A product placement that has carried out well gives the viewer an authentic feeling and is shown in a context that is not affected. As it looks today it is usually the production-companies that take the first contact in the chain for product placement.

In this paper we want to give a point of view of why companies choose to use product placement. We want to know if there is more than an economic reason to use this type of marketing, and what the reason for that could be. We also want to know if there are any kind of companies that are more common in this context. To get our selection we started by watching two Swedish movies, Wallander: Hemligheten and Smala Sussie. On the basis of the products we saw in the movies, we contacted the companies behind those, so we could get our answers about the phenomena. Later, we also made a quantitative survey to get an understanding of how long every brand is shown. This was made because we wanted to see if there are any variances in different kind of companies. We also had contact with a media-firm who worked with one of the placements that we saw, to get their point of view in this subject.

Our result has shown us that product placement mainly is a complement to traditional advertising. It is used to strengthen the brand and keep it alive. There is always a risk for companies to place their products since it is common that the final result is not what it was from the beginning. We have also seen that there are not any type of companies that are shown more then others, this varies between the productions, depending on what genre and goal the production has.