Recent research into the effectiveness of strategic product placement (embedded marketing) in movies is indicating that this sector of advertising is poised for substantial growth next year and beyond. According to researchers in the Department of Research and Economic Affairs at Arizona State University, marketers are projected to invest $1.8 billion in 2010 to have their products appear in movies, a nearly 150 percent increase from the level set just five years earlier. That equates to a 30 percent annual increase from 2005 through 2010 just for movie placement. This increase does not include the spend for placement in TV shows, plays, music videos, etc.
Marketers may be investing with good reason, if the ASU researchers are right. First, their research shows that sales of the successfully embedded product increase. Second, the marketer/manufacturer realizes an increase in its stock price if it is publicly traded. Third, a good embed has a long lasting, subliminal effect on the consumer.
Successful product embedding requires identifying the right target market and avoiding saturating the media with too many product placements in the same media, which dilutes the potential impact on the audience.
Product placement, which is the practice of using real products and services in media, can be traced back some 113 years to an 1896 film by the Lumiere brothers in which a Sunlight soap cart appears on a street, and 90 years ago to the 1919 Fatty Arbuckle comedy, The Garage, which featured Red Crown gasoline. Many famous early films have plugged products, including the 1946 classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra. What was the product promoted? A copy of National Geographic.
Product placements have gotten fancier and sexier since the promotions for soap carts and magazines dealing with cultures, animals and environments. Luxury cars, consumer electronics, computers and tobacco products now dominate product placements in media, with the automobile being the most common product placement.
In addition to the most common media for the use of product placements - movies,
product placements also appear in TV shows, plays, music videos, video games and books.
A variant of embedded marketing is the practice of actually incorporating the product into a film’s plot, known as “brand integration.” Brand Channel (www.brandchannel.com) specializes in tracking this category of product placement. At the time this article is being written, the number one movie in America is Disney’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a clever, precautionary tale for kids from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation. Fittingly, Sony has woven into the storyline some of its audio equipment, and Jell-O is also integrated into the plot.
Embedded marketing is divided into consumables/locations acquired from marketers as offsets to production costs, and products plugged for a direct fee. Advertisement placement is a modification of product embedding, in which the marketer appears in the creative instead of the product. TV game shows (Wheel of Fortune, The Price is Right, etc.) have pioneered promotional consideration, where the marketer’s product is awarded and the product marketer/manufacturer provides the game show with funding.
An effective product placement strategy builds an emotional bridge to the consumer, enticing the consumer to both identify with the marketer as well as want to purchase or use the embed. “Emotional connectivity” is emerging as a key link in the media value chain, because the positive associations a consumer makes with a product can outlast the product’s shelf life and can be transferred to a new or similar product by the same manufacturer. This is the concept of the “long tail,” as first described by Chris Anderson in an influential Wired article in 2004. The long tail posits that creatives have long lasting emotional effects on consumers.
Measuring the effectiveness of advertising goes back to Claude Hopkin’s (1866-1932) seminal book, Scientific Advertising, first published in 1925. The “science” in Scientific Advertising refers to the application of metrics to quantify and measure a promotion’s impact, and today advertising/marketing experts swear by the effectiveness of such industry standards as ROI, recall, impressions, conversions and KPI’s, techniques which can be traced back to Hopkins’ magnum opus. [Editor’s Note: See “Book Review - Scientific Advertising Is Alive and Well” in the April 2009 edition of The USIM Gazette®].
Quantitative and qualitative measurements of the effectiveness of product placements include rating systems that measure the species of embed and on-screen exposure from the metric of recalls rates.
Product placements enjoy a long and storied history, and have emerged as a viable adjunct to the commercial, which can be skipped with time-shifting devices like digital video recorders. Further, product placements can increase the selling power of the product, improve the marketer/manufacturer’s stock price, and create the highly valued “warm and fuzzy” feelings between advertiser and consumer.
By Darrell Woody
Gazette Staff Writer