Having your biggest selling product rubbished on the big screen by one of the world's most famous film stars, is probably not part of most companies marketing strategy.

When a blood-soaked Bruce Willis squatted barefoot on a glass covered floor discussing the lack of nutritional value in a Twinkie bun he was in fact earning a cool $100,000 (€96,880) to add to his multimillion dollar fee for the film.

A surprisingly large number of companies are lining up to have their products degraded with many willing to pay large amounts of money for the honour.

Ms Liz Daly, a lecturer in marketing communications at Dublin Institute of Technology says that exposure of any nature to a brand or image does have an impact on people, even if the scenario is not that positive.

"At some level the brain registers the image or logo so when you go to buy something in a store if you haven't seen any of the brands before that logo or image will seem more familiar."

The Irish film industry may not be in the same league as Hollywood but for small filmmakers getting free products for use in their films can be vital with low budgets making it impossible for the producers to rent or buy all the products needed.

Mr Ronan Glennan, producer of the Irish film, Peaches, which will hit our screens next year, says it was an uphill struggle to get Irish companies to supply free products in return for placements in the film.

They did secure the use of a few Ford motor cars from Ashley Motors, and also did deals for free products from Coca-Cola and received vouchers from Xtra-vision which they passed onto their extras who were unpaid.

Since the day the most popular of aliens, ET, gobbled back vast quantities of Reese's Pieces on the big screen, the phenomenon of product placement in feature films has exploded.

The last James Bond offering incorporated a multitude of brands and drove one critic to comment: "Tomorrow Never Dies, but integrity might."

Product placement does not yet have a reputation as an established way of marketing products in the Republic but it can be very effective even as a means of promoting a new product.

Ms Daly said: "If a new product is placed in a scenario that is interesting to the viewer or one in which the viewer is highly involved, it will provoke people to think why the product is there or make them associate it with a particular emotional stimulus."

The more the relevance of the situation to the person the higher the likelihood that people will go and search for more information about the product.

She said that unless a scene were extremely gruesome, people tended to have a high limit of acceptability, and it would take a lot for a placement to create a negative reaction in people's minds.

RTE's marketing director, Mr Paul Mulligan, says that to make a shop or bar authentic, sets have to have real products on display but RTE operates a strict policy of rotating products and buys what is on display out of its own budget.

"We try and avoid using products as much as possible but we can't have a pub scene without real beer taps. But we don't take any money or free products for doing so."

However, the stalwart of Christmas theatre, the pantomime, which is highly dependent on sponsorship, sees most theatre companies place products on its set as part of a sponsorship deal. Public relations manager at the Gaiety theatre in Dublin, Ms Geraldine Kearney, says "we would offer them a product placement or a mention of the product or company in the script as part of any sponsorship deal but we wouldn't allow it to take over the story".

Mr Paul Keenan of DIT who has done extensive study into product placement in films says most companies pay between $20,000 and $100,000 to get their products placed.

If a film grosses £50 million (€63.5 million), the products will reach a captive audience of 13.7 million people directly as well as the estimated sales of 200,000 videos and rentals which follow.

Indeed films may be a last resort or safe haven for cigarette companies as their advertising avenues are progressively closed down with bans of billboard and broadcast advertising.

Mr Keenan says that a number of studies have been done showing the effectiveness of product placement for companies.

"Tests have shown that viewers who had seen Sylvester Stallone with a can of Pepsi in his hand in a film could clearly remember the brand in the scene for two to three days after."

This may seem a short-term effect but considering the number of people the product will reach in one fell swoop, particularly if a film is successful, it seems good value for money.

If a film achieves cult status the sky is the limit with a company getting years of extremely positive free advertising and if the product itself is analogous with the film, it may also achieve cult status.

At international level, the first appearance of a then new range of BMW roadsters being driven by James Bond - replacing the character's more familiar Aston Martin - had an immediate impact.

Sales of the new model in the United States skyrocketed with waiting lists for the new car replacing a situation where the company had to offer discounts to sell the new Z3.

The company's products continue to feature in the latest Bond movie, The World is not Enough, and BMW's general manager for sales and marketing in Ireland, Mr Michael Nugent, says the association with Bond has boosted the motor firm's profile enormously and the fun aspect of the films has helped to humanise the brand.

The dream of any marketing executive is to see their product reach a worldwide audience without the cost of a billion dollar or pound campaign, and this is exactly what product placement offers.