Product placement marketing is becoming extremely popular today because it offers many advantages to all parties involved. Branded entertainment promotions have helped many companies to significantly improve their bottom line, especially when linked to movies with a high success rate. The information below will highlight some of the uses and advantages of product placement.
First, let take a look at exactly what is branded entertainment.
Branded entertainment, sometimes referred to as product placement marketing, is a strategy that is used to infuse branded products into various forms of entertainment. Basically, brands would offer monetary consideration to or pay for producers of films, television shows, web videos, video games and other forms of entertainment to include their products in entertainment presentations.
The emergence of movie product placement strategy has coincided with the diminishing interests in the traditional advertising mediums. Many companies discovered that consumers were not paying attention to traditional advertising media, so product placement was incorporated in their marketing strategy to reach a wider audience. Marketers reinvented their strategies and started to place advertisements in popular movies and television shows to capture consumer’s attention.
Uses and Advantages of Product Placement
When marketers started to use branded entertainment strategies, increasingly more companies were seen promoting their products in popular movies and television shows. These advertisements can be seen in popular films such as James Bond featuring Omega watches; Mission Impossible featuring Apple Macs; Men In Black promoting Ray Ban glasses and many popular television shows such as The Apprentice, Top Chef, Project Runaway and American Idol.
As of such, the branded entertainment strategy became a magic potion for marketers. Due to the major success of advertising in movies and TV shows, the marketers move on to the next level and started to use web videos, video games, music videos and other entertainment mediums.
Product placement marketing offers several advantages to manufacturers, producers and movie stars. From the perspective of the marketers, it provided companies with an opportunity to be associated with famous actors and to use movie footage and stills to conveniently advertise other products. As it pertains to the producers and actors, they earned substantial amount in fees as well as the chance to endorse brands in various film festivals.
Musicians also benefit from branded entertainment in their music videos and lyrics. Most artists use the earnings from these deals to offset the overall cost of producing their music videos.
The marketers are also using the Internet to incorporate product placements in songs that music fans would get from YouTube. In this case, the main advantage is that brands would develop higher retention rates in people’s minds whenever the artists perform at shows and concerts.
Overall, product placement and branded entertainment strategies have proven to be extremely effective as more consumers are linking certain products to the names of famous actors and singers. For this strategy to work, the brands must be featured prominently whilst making subtly appearance in movies, television shows, web videos or video games.