Effectiveness of Product Placement

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Asian Journal of Research in Business and Management e-ISSN: 2682-8510 | Vol. 2, No. 4, 22-25, 2020 http://myjms.mohe.gov.my/index.php/ajrbm

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Effectiveness of Product Placement

Rasfan Abu Bakar

Faculty of Animation & Multimedia, ASWARA, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

*Corresponding Author: [email protected]

Accepted: 15 December 2020 | Published: 28 December 2020

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Abstract: This paper investigates the effectiveness of product placement in advertising. It discusses the effects of product placement on ad content recall and acknowledgment, as well as customers’ attitudes towards the brand and their purchase intention. Since various companies become in product placement activities in various level with varying efficiency, the coherence of the product placement has been spotted by professional marketers. The significant factors contributing to product placement, for instance the context and environment within which the product is exhibited or used are one of its main dissimilarity from other marketing strategies.

Keywords: advertising, product, consumerism, media, marketing, marketing strategies ___________________________________________________________________________

1. Introduction

Product placement also known as embedded marketing is a form of advertisement, where branded services or products are situated in a context usually destitute or devoid of ads, for example movies, clips of music videos, the story line of a dramas or television shows or news programs. Fundamentally, the products that we use every day in our lives are included in a movie or a series by making them used by the characters involved. Through this kind of involvement, companies are able to introduce and launch new products to the market. The companies can influence the consumers who try to avoid advertisement, while at the same time they can have a more innovative advertisement channel, with the benefits of advertising surreptitiously in TV series and movies.

One of the vital conditions for a product to be successful in the marketplace is executing an efficient marketing strategy. Companies and brands may select variety marketing strategies including advertising, internet marketing, public relations, sales promotion, word of mouth marketing, direct sales and others. Every marketing tools have their benefits and drawbacks.

The justification behind the choice the choice among these tools associates with the type of the product, type and situation of the market and the marketing strategy of the company.

As regularly believed, product placement is not a current occurrence but it was originated back to the earliest days of cinema. More than a century ago, it began in ‘Soap Opera’ radio broadcast, a remarkable means of popular entertainment at the time. Within the storyline, this broadcast always mentioned diverse and various soap products in exchange for financial support. Product placement is rapidly turning a shortcut and wise way for brands to reach their target audience in more indistinct ways, in this modern era of skipping commercial among our society.

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Instead of an explicit advertisement, product placement is the publication and promotion of branded goods and services within the context of a film, show or personal videos. When a service or product come into sight in a TV show or movie, the company that produced those has usually paid for their brand to be shown and appear on radio or on screen. Also known as advertising or embedded marketing, the practice has been around for quite sometimes now but compared to decades ago, marketers nowadays have become much more creative and sophisticated in the ways or methods they use it.

2. Literature Review

Newell, Salmon and Chang (2006) provided proofs that the first product placement as a matter of fact took place in the movie Washing Day in Switzerland in 1896, even though most authors date product placement back to the 1930s. A Swiss businessman named Francois-Henri Lavanchy-Clarke who functioned as an European distributor and promoter for the Lever Brothers, a U.K soap manufacturer, entered into an agreement with the movie producers, and produced Washing Day in Switzerland. One of the scenes in the movie includes two cases of Lever Brothers’ soap prominently placed in front of two women washing clothes (Newell, Salmon, & Chang, 2006).

Mere product exposure via a simple visual/audio presence in a program, while brand integration involves product participation in a program's story as a device to enhance plot or character interactions or provide a sense of realism, is what product placement is according to Caraciolli Davis (2005). Product placement(PPL), also called "brand placement", which is a prominent type of "hybrid message" in communication, and pay to place branded products in the content of mass media programming, such as movies, music videos, TV shows, radios, or news programs in order to fulfill its promotional goals(Steortz,1987, Karrh,1998). The purpose of this communication strategy is to arouse audience's awareness of product, to advance consumer recognition and further affects consumer preference and purchase intention (Morton and Friedman, 2002).

Balasubramanian (1994) thinks that organizations often count on two non-personal communication devices: advertising and publicity, in order to expose media audiences to product-related information. That is, advertising refers to communications that are paid for, which is clearly identifying the message sponsor. In contrast, publicity represents message that are not paid for, which do not identify the sponsor (Cohen, 1988). Product placements have some effects on customers that are positive for memory (Gupta and Lord 1998; Roehm and Boone 2004; Russell 2002), and brand attitude (Russell 2002), or for choice (Law and Braun 2000). However, there is potential for a negative shift in brand attitude after forcing consumers to view brand information.

The most familiar measure for product placement has been consumer memory, and the evidence is indefinite (Law and Braun, 2000). There have been several evidences for the concept that product placements facilitate brand memory (Babin and Carder, 1996; Vollmers and Mizerski, 1994). It is critical to note that the measures normally used to evaluate placement effectiveness have been recall and recognition. Several studies have emphasized on investigating whether consumer's brand awareness is obviously adds after watching a movie or drama with more branded products (Gupta and Lord, 1998).

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3. Discussion

One of the success and effectiveness of product placement has been proven by the blockbuster film E.T, directed by Stephen Spielberg in year 1982. This film featured Reese’s Pieces, a new candy introduced by Hershey at that time, was used to effortlessly coax the alien character out of hiding. Hershey agreed to sponsor $1million worth of advertising for the film, in return. It was a very worthwhile investment as E.T was massively successful and sales of Reese’s Pieces increased by 80%. Red Stripe beer in ‘The Firm’ in 1993 is another outstanding example of highly successful product placement in the 80s and 90s. Sales of the Jamaican beer in the United States rose by 50% and Guinness Brewing Worldwide obtained a majority stake in the brewery just a few weeks later for $62million, within a month of the film’s release.

According to few researches that have been carried out before, product placement is considered as forced exposure which will cause unwelcome interruption that can irritate and annoy viewers. Regardless of the type of forced exposure employed, it is logical to think that with forced exposure, the customer’s attention is forcibly drawn to the product that is being promoted. This should be expected to result in a higher likelihood that the product used is noticed by the customer, especially compared to commercial break ads which could be easily ignored. This increased attention and should increase the memorability of the product, and thus, result in higher recall and recognition. The effects of forced exposure on attitudes, however, are more contentious. Nonetheless, despite its potential to cause interruptions and possible irritation, causes positive affect that enhances the customer’s attitude towards the brand. This should subsequently, enhance the attitude toward the brand and increase purchase intention.

As claimed by Roediger & Mcdermott (1993), the theories to a critical categorization of memory are divided into two aspects which are consciousness or awareness captured in the distinction between explicit and implicit memory. Jacoby (1984) stated that explicit memory is assessed with recall and recognition tasks that require intentional retrieval of information from a specific prior episode. Implicit memory in contrast, is assessed with tasks that do not require conscious recollection of specific episodes. Learning can happen without awareness and realization, as suggested by the evidence from psychology and marketing literature.

Therefore, marketers need to creatively find ways on how to apply unconscious learning approaches into the field of product placement. For example, it can be done by making the character drink the same soda drinks for a few times and praise the taste, that will influence the viewers to go out and buy that drink without realizing that it was a marketing strategy. They will unknowingly learn that the soda drink tastes so good just because the characters in the film always drink it. The objective of positioning is to occupy a distinctive place in the minds of the target market. Product placement has shown better product and brand recall, most of the times.

Projected personal actions refer to a brand are the purchase intention of the particular brand.

Owing to the fact that intentions are related to plans for individuals to achieve behaviour, purchase intention is a person’s plot or plan to purchase a definite brand. Marketing managers need to engage in consumer purchase intention in existing or new product sales and service predictions which will be a great help in deciding the demands of their products, market segmentation and suitable or necessary types of promotional strategies. The moment potential customers received the messages of product placement from the drama or film they watched;

they would generate affection and ignition cognition in mind. This relationship can decide if the product placement can successfully communicate with customers, and then further their purchase intentions.

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However, risks are involved in the product placement as well, just as in any type of advertisement. Compared to those involved in magazine advertisements, the levels of the risks in product placement are notably higher. This is due to the reason that more consumers will see the advertisement, in comparison to magazine adverts. The filtering of the product promotion cannot be done afterwards, unlike in magazines where the ads pages can be adjusted and modified just before the magazine is printed. As products that were overly advertised can also trigger annoyance among the viewers, a badly placed product placement can cause the movie experience to be spoiled. They will criticize the movie every dissatisfaction that they had.

4. Conclusion

For the past three decades, product placement has become an important part of the marketing strategies of companies. Marketers find it useful, especially now, because of the flood of media advertisements, to use product placement to help break through advertising clutter. In recent years, advertisers have become increasingly concerned about where and how their products appear on screen, paid or unpaid. They have been more vigilant; withholding the permission to use their products in scenes they think could set a negative tone.

Advertisers are becoming increasingly concerned about the way their brands are portrayed in films because it is very important to mindfully and seamlessly integrate products into films in order to minimize the risk of aggressive and forceful advertising which can possibly lead to negative results. It is better to have lesser but bigger sponsors. Moreover, a good strategy of long term product placement should be initiated and implemented because that would give guarantees and ensure both sides benefit equally from any deals made or done. From the beginning, the requirements must be crystal clear to avoid misunderstandings. Creative crew must as well be informed and in accordance so that everything that has been agreed is executed and performed. Even having a popular cast and director would help, however, even for smaller films creative opportunities for product placement can always be discovered.

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