Product placements

Product placement is executed in order to create a positive image for a brand. It means placing the products in movies and TV shows. The main difference between the sponsorship on television programs and the product placement is the control of the brands. By using a sponsorship a brand is financially supporting the television program and it has a control over the TV shows´ story lines or how the products are presented on the show. But when the brands are willing to execute product placement on the television shows, they are only paying for the produce of a movie or TV show in order to get their products to be seen somewhere in the show. The second biggest difference is that on sponsorship the brand is clearly seen and visible. Product placements are sometimes so subtle that people notice them only on unconscious level. (Blythe 2000:114; Russell 2002). According to Avery and Ferraro (2000) companies are utilizing product placement in order to sway the consumers´ brand attitudes.

According to Blythe (2000:115) and Pena (2011) product placement is based on associations people have linked on for example celebrities. When they have positive associations towards celebrities, they will most likely also feel positive about the product they are using on the show. But of course this is not always the case. For example a consumer may have so strong attitudes and negative image about a brand, that it makes no difference who uses the brand in a movie or TV show.

Product placement is seen to be a relatively easy way to expose consumers to companies´ products, but it is not the cheapest one. According to Blythe (2000:115) “product placement is academically under-researched.” He also argues “there is a high entry level in terms of cost because the cost of funding a movie or TV shows is high, even when the firm placing the products is only meeting a fraction of the cost… “. Not all companies can afford to do product placement. It usually requires a lot of time through extensive negotiations.

(Blythe 2000:115.)

Usually the companies´ main goal is to affect on a brand´s image by using the product placements on the various TV shows. Often the product placement is invisible to the audience because it fits to the show and to the specific scene so

well. Though sometimes the product placement can also affect negatively on consumers´ attitudes towards the brand. Although product placement has been studied a lot, only a little evidence has been found how it affects on people.

(Russell 2002.)

DeLorme´s and Reid´s (1999) qualitative investigation of product placements suggests that “consumers welcome the reality-enhancement aspect of product placement”. On the other hand, Gupta´s and Gould´s (1997) survey

“investigating viewers' attitudes toward the practice of product placement also indicate that too much repetition, obvious commercial motivations, or the use of ethically charged products, are less acceptable”. (Russell 2002.)

According to Kim, Kim, Song, & Tak (2002) a product placement can be defined either in a narrow or a broad sense. A narrow sense usually refers to a product that is used as a prop on a broadcast set. A broad sense refers more to an “indirect advertisement that promotes any product but the sponsors´. Product placement could be used to develop a marketing campaign strategy that uses indirect methods to promote the sponsors by exposing consumers to their images, names, or location.

According to Shashidhar (2014) the easiest way to utilize product placement is to place a product of a brand within a popular TV show. And “a more clever way is to integrate the brand with the show's script so that actors use the product and talk about it… The consumer has so many options to consume content today that if the brand doesn't look at participating in the content creation process it could face the risk of completely missing out its target audience.” By engaging the consumers of a brand, it is possible to create immense value for the brand. This engagement can be achieved by utilizing branded content in marketing communication.

Product placements can be categorized along three dimensions. These dimensions are called visual, auditory and plot connection. “The visual dimension refers to the appearance of the brand on the screen”. The second

“refers to the brand being mentioned in a dialogue” … and the third “refers to the degree to which the brand is integrated in the plot of the story…the level of plot connection will determine the role and meaningfulness of a placement in a story”. (Russell 1998; Russell 2002). Some of the previous researches have focused

primarily on “encoding the differences between visual and auditory information”. (Russell 2002.)

Russell (2002) used a theater methodology and experiment to study the effectiveness of product placements. The purpose of the study was to

“investigate whether the ways a brand is placed within audiovisual media programming affect memory for the brands and attitudes toward those brands”.

107 marketing students were invited to join a live performance. “The stage readings were presented as the pilot of a new television sitcom”. Afterwards the students completed a five-paged survey. The main point was to measure their attitudes towards the show. The experiment included five one-hour laboratory sessions with approximately 30 undergraduate marketing students. The students watched 27-minute sitcom and afterwards completed a questionnaire.

According to Russell´s study (2002) auditory placements are better recalled than visual placements in both the lower and higher plot connection but there was no significant difference between higher and lower plot auditory placements.

(Figure 5). Though higher plot visual placements were better remembered then the lower plot visual placements.

Figure 5. The recognition scores. (Russell 2002.)

Russell´s study (2002) also presented that lower plot visual placements were more persuasive than higher plot visual placements. (Figure 6). Russell also

argued that that higher plot auditory placements were more persuasive than lower plot auditory placements. H congruous placements were more persuasive in this study than incongruous ones. In this study incongruent placements were found to adversely affect brand attitudes because such placements appear unnatural.

Figure 6. Attitude change scores. (Russell 2002.)