Product Placement
Product Placement
A. Introduction
The embedded advertising technique of product placement has made it possible to reach a wider audience as opposed to traditional advertising which caters to a comparatively narrow audience. After 2018, there is a significant rise in the expenditure on product placement, marking an increase of 170% to $11.63 billion in the U.S. (Corkindale et al., 2021). Attributing to the shift in the way the masses now view entertainment, from television to streaming services, this dramatic shift is justified. The integration of products in a variety of entertainment media has also expanded to include digital platforms such as YouTube, Snapchat, and video and offline games (Corkindale et al., 2021). Therefore, a wider range of audiences can easily be reached by leveraging different platforms. Audiences usually tend to skip adverts they are not interested in, making it difficult for brands to reach the masses. An alternative solution to this is weaving product placements into the entertainment content. Making placements appear naturally within the storyline of movies and TV shows, can make the characters appear realistic. It can even become part of cultural norms. This is supported by a case study in the New York Times, that dissects and discusses several successful examples of product placement in cinema and television shows. Furthermore, this essay will also highlight the connection between influencers across different social media platforms and efficient product placements. Influencer marketing is increasingly becoming popular due to the dynamic nature of the relationship between influencers and customers (Jin & Muqaddam, 2019). An analysis done by Harvard Business Review shines a light on the impact of influencers. It also asserts the tone that influencers must take while posting on social media, to achieve maximum engagement.
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B. Themes Emerged
a. Product placement and its effectiveness in the entertainment industry
Product placement across different entertainment platforms like movies and TV series, make use of branded content to impress the audience without attracting excess attention and keep them unaware of the persuasion attempt (Ülker-demirel & Yıldız, 2021). Upon examining the audience’s response to placed products, it was observed that they enjoy the product placements in TV series as it helps in character development, increases realism builds historical subtext, and develops familiarity. (Ülker-demirel & Yıldız, 2021). Audiences who react favourably to placing products in movies and movie scenes where product placement is integrated smoothly depict positive brand attitudes towards products in specific product categories (Ülker-demirel & Yıldız, 2021). To increase the credibility of viewers, an essential part is played by the relationship between the characters in a movie and the brands associated with the actors/actresses (Ülker-demirel & Yıldız, 2021). Hence, a product placement suitable for the character can potentially create awareness for the brand and even have a positive effect on the brand image (Ülker-demirel & Yıldız, 2021). Viewers connect with the movie world by mapping their aspirations onto the placed product (Srivastava, 2020), which as a result influences brand attitudes and consumption norms (Pechmann & Srivastava, 2020). When consumers view famed actors using a brand, it adds credibility and incites an interest in that brand (Srivastava, 2020) Ultimately, this placement leads to a personality transfer from the actor to the brand, affecting the consumer’s attitude, and brand equity, and consumer’s purchase intent (Srivastava, 2020). In contrast with traditional advertising, product placement in movies can unobtrusively enter a storyline (Stephen et al., 2021). Product placement also has a longer shelf-life, extensive audience reach, longer duration (2-3 hours of audio-visual content) as well as physical interaction between celebrities and the brand (Stephen et al., 2021). Additionally, product placement is represented in various styles, such as background display, verbal, a combination of audio and visual aspects, and through media character interaction (Stephen et al., 2021). These styles will attract audiences’ attention and increase the likelihood of processing information (Stephen et al., 2021).
Product placement that appears visually and verbally is categorized as prominent product placement, which can be further subdivided into integrated explicit and non-integrated explicit (Kongmanon & Petison, 2022). Integrated explicit product placement is highly interactive and depicts the physical interaction between the characters and the product. Considering the highly reciprocal and prominent visibility, this placement is highly stimulating for brand recall. (Kongmanon & Petison, 2022). Product placement also offers affectionate persuasion (Kongmanon & Petison, 2022) and it creates lesser feelings of irritation among the customers (Kongmanon & Petison, 2022). Feelings of irritation and annoyance towards advertising lead to feelings of dislike towards the products (Kongmanon & Petison, 2022). Therefore, marketers must be careful to not overly bombard the viewers with explicit product placements.
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The promise of the Associative Network Memory model (Sharma et al., 2022), states that human memory consists of a system of cognitive networks consisting of interlinked nodes. There are existing links between a node for the brand, and the product, the category of the product, and the need satisfied to buy the product (Sharma et al., 2022). Exposing the brand in appropriate situations impacts the memory related to the brand and reinforces the essential link (Sharma et al., 2022). Following this, there can be a boost in consumer purchase behaviour (Sharma et al., 2022). Ideally, a successful product placement can be defined if there is a peak in consumer purchase behaviour that can be measured by an increase in sales of the placed product (Sharma et al., 2022). A practical example of this was observed when a Netflix show, “Stranger Things” reported £22.8m in brand placement. According to the article in The Independent, several placed brands reported a healthy increase in return for placed products on Netflix. One of the major placed brands, Coca-Cola received almost six times the value against product placement compared to Pepsi across the UK and US (Green, 2022). Another example of successful product placement was when Zillow, a real estate company, approached BEN, an AI company that integrates brands into entertainment content. Zillow was looking to capitalize on “change of life” events and BEN helped them achieve that goal. Zillow ended up being a part of numerous Netflix shows, such as, “Grace and Frankie,” “Never Have I Ever", and “Sweet Magnolias", among others. BEN also experimented with different strategies and had verbal mentions of Zillow inserted into the script, for instance, a character’s line would say. "I Zillowed his house and it’s only worth x”. The idea was to make Zillow part of the cultural norm (Haigney, 2022).
Image 1: Product Placement of "CORE" water
Source: Haigney, 2022
In conclusion, product placement can prove to be valuable not only to marketers but also to the producers of entertainment content. Marketers can easily reach a large-scale consumer base through placed products and the interaction with characters helps producers inject realism into their content.
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b. Role of influencers in effective product placement
The interactive form of persuasion to open brand dialogue and produce organic user-generated content defines influencer marketing (Ghosh, 2021). Influencer marketing is achieved by offering products in exchange for content produced by an influencer. The produced content includes the products received in a natural setting. After the COVID pandemic, the “digital transformation” of relationships is termed “the new normal” (Ghosh, 2021). This led to influences adapting the format of their content to positively focus on how every day can be cheerful utilizing relevant collaborations. A new term was coined, “homefluencers” as they are home-bound social media influencers, that have revived their follower relationship by connecting with appropriate brands within confinement (Ghosh, 2021). This can be successfully leveraged by marketers to generate positive reviews, in a cost-effective manner. Adverts can be updated to match the target audience's sentiment (Ghosh, 2021). Additionally, the widespread reach of social media influencers can benefit marketers to reach not only their target audience but people that can potentially be converted into their target audience. Given the rapid rise in the number of influencers, marketers no longer have limited choices. The wide range of characteristics among the available influencer talents is perhaps the most interesting and dynamic element (Campbell & Farrell, 2020). Influencers differ significantly in various aspects such as branding and focus, follower base, engagement rates, and monetary requirements for collaboration, among others (Campbell & Farrell, 2020). Thus, brands must be exceedingly careful when deciding to approach an influencer. Only the correct fit between the influencer and brand produces the desired response. Instagram posts by influencers endorsing a certain brand have received positive responses as opposed to posts by the brand itself (Jin & Muqaddam, 2019). Authentic-looking posts that include influencers will produce higher levels of attraction from consumers whereas product-only posts will negatively impact corporate credibility (Jin & Muqaddam, 2019). Moreover, brand attitude is directly affected by visual content, such that content featuring the influencers themselves will have higher brand likability and consequently result in a positive brand attitude (Jin & Muqaddam, 2019). Furthermore, influencers are more efficient per follower for engagement than celebrities over general product categories (Rutter et al., 2021), as celebrity product placements are expensive as opposed to influencer campaigns. Thus, by using specialist influencers higher engagement can be achieved without overspending and underachieving (Rutter et al., 2021). Users view influencers as trendsetters because they project the image of being a trustworthy source of information as opposed to traditional advertising (Rutter et al., 2021). This can be especially beneficial to certain industries, such as fashion, to create fresh and long-lasting trends that reach the masses.
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A new type of opinion leader known as “Citizen Influencers” (CI) increases a brand’s message credibility by means of natural settings in their content (Martensen et al., 2018) Thus, user-generated content (UGC) by CIs can be perceived as brand storytelling, wherein visual and textual attributes are arranged to place brands in the plot, and CIs as the main character. This narration can also trigger an emotional response and strengthen the persuasiveness of the CIs (Martensen et al., 2018). Cleverly using the scope, CIs can help in reshaping the audience’s opinion regarding brands. An analysis conducted by Leug et al., in 2022 in Harvard Business Review analyzes over 5,800 influencer marketing posts on the Chinese social media platform Weibo in partnership with an international influencer marketing agency. Findings suggested that consumers were more likely to engage with moderate-positive posts since they suggest a strong and authentic endorsement. A Clinique influencer received substantial engagement for a post that exemplified an effective and medium-positive tone. Overly positive messages tend to backfire as consumers view them as disingenuous. Reducing positivity can help brands boost ROI by an average of 1.9%. (Leug et al., 2022). Another example wherein influencers helped build large-scale engagement was reported by the Times of India for the HDFC bank’s “#AdAnInfluencer” campaign which garnered 1 million interactions and 20 million impressions within 48 hours (Mallik, 2022).
To conclude, by utilizing the power and reach of social media influencers, brands can cater to an extensive audience. Brands must put careful consideration into choosing an influencer as part of their marketing campaign to convey the right message to their intended audience.
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C. Conclusion
Overall, brands can largely benefit from integrating their products into the narrative of the story. Appropriate placed products must be used to inspire realism and bring the characters to life. Similarly, to portray an authentic and accurate message, that will help in shaping a brand’s attitude in the minds of consumers, the competence of influencers must be utilized. A balanced combination of product placement in cinema and tv shows and influencer marketing can significantly boost a brand’s visibility thereby increasing awareness and driving up sales.
References
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Campbell, C. and Farrell, J.R. (2020) “More than meets the eye: The functional components underlying influencer marketing,” Business Horizons, 63(4), pp. 469–479. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2020.03.003.
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Corkindale, D., Neale, M. and Bellman, S. (2021) “Product placement and integrated marketing communications effects on an informational TV program,” Journal of Advertising, pp. 1–19. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2021.1981500.
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Ghosh, M. (2021) “Product placement by social media homefluencers during new normal,” South Asian Journal of Marketing, 3(1), pp. 21–37. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/sajm-05-2021-0069.
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Green, A. (2022) ‘Stranger Things season four drives £22.8m in brand placement’, The Independent, 8 August. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/business/stranger-things-season-four-drives-ps22-8m-in-brand-placement-b2147314.html (Accessed: December 21, 2022).
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Haigney, S. (2022) ‘Anatomy of Product Placement’, The New York Times, 24 June. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/23/arts/product-placement.html (Accessed: December 21, 2022).
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Jin, S.V. and Muqaddam, A. (2019) “Product placement 2.0: "Do brands need influencers, or do influencers need brands?,’” Journal of Brand Management, 26(5), pp. 522–537. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41262-019-00151-z
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Kongmanon, J. and Petison, P. (2022) “What do you see and what do you recall?: Using eye tracking to understand product placement,” Cogent Business & Management, 9(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/23311975.2022.2120263.
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Leug, L.F. et al. (2022) ‘Does Influencer Marketing Really Pay Off?’, Harvard Business Review, 24 November. Available at: https://hbr.org/2022/11/does-influencer-marketing-really-pay-off (Accessed: December 21, 2022).
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Malik, D. (2022) ‘Influencer marketing – An ideal opportunity to enhance sales during the festive season’, The Times of India, 18 December. Available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/influencer-marketing-an-ideal-opportunity-to-enhance-sales-during-the-festive-season/ (Accessed: December 21, 2022).
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Martensen, A., Brockenhuus-Schack, S. and Zahid, A.L. (2018) “How citizen influencers persuade their followers,” Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 22(3), pp. 335–353. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/jfmm-09-2017-0095.
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Rutter, R.N. et al. (2021) “Social Media Influencers, product placement and network engagement: Using AI Image Analysis to empirically test relationships,” Industrial Management & Data Systems, 121(12), pp. 2387–2410. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/imds-02-2021-0093.
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Sharma, A., Nicolau, J.L. and Mas, F.J. (2022) “The effect of movie and television placements,” Tourism Management, 91, p. 104517. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2022.104517.
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Srivastava, R. (2020) “Brand placement in a movie song and its impact on brand equity,” Journal of Promotion Management, 26(2), pp. 233–252. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10496491.2019.1699627.
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Stephen, G. et al. (2021) “Investigating the influence of audiences’ movie-viewing motives on attitude towards brand placement in movies,” Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science, 31(4), pp. 487–510. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/21639159.2020.1808813.
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Ülker-demirel, E. and Yıldız, E. (2021) “The effects of audience's attitudes on actor, character, movie and product placement on the brand attitude,” Istanbul Business Research [Preprint]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.26650/ibr.2020.49.0013.