My name is Gary Moore, and I am in my 27th year at Dell Technologies (though I left for a brief time and came back during the dot.com craze)!

Working in product placement is a great job! I love the movies, and getting to work with the entertainment industry is just a hoot. We look for TV shows and film that we can place Dell products into as props or set dressing. We get the visibility of our brand being seen. It’s really a win/win. I got started in product placement because I was at the right place at the right time. I was a notebook product manager in the product group. My phone rang one day. Kim Britt, the woman who started product placement at Dell, was looking for someone to help a prop master with a troublesome laptop – I was the first one that answered. After I helped the prop master, I called her back to ask about her job... it took 3-4 years, but I ended up joining the team somewhere around 2011 or so.

Our product placement team focuses on scripted TV and film, and we try to place everywhere there is a good opportunity. We want to protect the brand – so there are some things we avoid – but we say, "yes," as much as we can. If it has a Dell logo on it, we’ve probably placed it somewhere. Monitors and laptops are the most common, but we’ve placed servers as well. We’ve even placed some of the Alienware hoodies!

Do you have relationships with people in the media and entertainment industry?

It is indeed a relationship business. We work with prop masters, set decorators and studio folks – many of them we’ve worked with for years on multiple projects. I think they come to Dell for a couple of reasons. Mainly it’s our brand – everyone knows us. We have a great selection of product – corporate, premium, gaming – so we usually have something for whatever type of scene they are filming. Finally, we do everything we can to make it easy to work with us. We take out all the friction.

Over the last 20 years, there have been hundreds, maybe a thousand different movies and shows where Dell has been featured. In the last year, we’ve sent gear to around 150 TV shows (episodic programs) and probably 50 films.

What skill would someone interested in Marketing, or specifically your role, need to have? 

I recommend being willing to adapt to a fast-changing environment, especially because the film industry is always changing. Also, be good with people and building relationships and understand our products and our brand.

How do you measure the effectiveness of product placement? 

We use a third-party company that measures and values the presence of our brand in TV and film.

What is your favorite placement you’ve done for Dell Technologies products? 

It would have to be The Big Bang Theory. It was a great show for Dell. It was smart and funny. It ran for 12 seasons and Dell appeared in every episode except for one! Our brand was a great fit for the show. It was a big success. The show creator, Chuck Lorre and the lead cast, set up a scholarship fund at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for undergraduates pursuing STEM programs. We were able to contribute to the fund and to this day, we provide every graduate of the Big Bang Scholarship Fund with a new Dell laptop!

That’s always a tough question – picking just one. I do love the movies. I’m a fan of bad Science Fiction, Hitchcock movies, anything that features an airplane and of course classics like The Godfather and Jaws. Horror is about the only genre that I’m not a fan!

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