Reading 2

Unit 2- Reading 2

Page 16

PRODUCT PLACEMENT

The Japanese television series Tiger and Bunny started in 2011 as an advertiser’s dream. Cartoon superheroes do good deeds partly so they can wear costumes with company names on them. A character named Wild Tiger wears a suit bearing the names of S.H. Figuarts (a Japanese toy company) and a media company named Softbank Other characters wear suits with labels for the Bandai game company, Pepsi soft drinks, and the food company Cal bee. Each corporate sponsor of the show is assigned to one of the heroes. No sponsor is linked with any bad guy, because that would contradict the branding message.

The sponsors of Tiger and Benny depend not on commercial breads but on product placement— inserting products into the show’s plot’ and setting. A brand is the set of images that arise when the name of a company or product is mentioned. In Tiger and Bunny, a company name symbolizes the doing of good deeds, and this builds a great brand image. The sponsors believe that they can generate revenue by linking their brands to likeable characters. For TV networks and movie companies, product placement is great because it costs very little while earning significant income to help subsidize their shows and films.

THE IMPORTANCE OF PLACEMENT

Product placement can take many forms. In Tiger and Bunny, it is readily apparent. In other cases, it is more subtle. The product doesn’t even have to fit the theme of the show. A movie or TV character might check email on an Apple computer and then sit at a breakfast table with a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. He gets into his car, a Honda, and then answers his Nokia cell phone. Each product is part of the background, to not a featured part of the movie. In the viewer’s mind, the product registers as the normal thing to use.

Companies may turn to product placement to reach consumers at unusual times. A business cannot stop a movie at a theater to show commercials. To a company, this is a wasted opportunity. Hundreds of potential customers are sitting together, all their eyes focused on a screen for nearly two hours, and no one is thinking about the company’s products. How can the company convert that film into a medium that carries product messages? The logical way is to put a soft drink, or car, or refrigerator into the movie. If the film is good, viewers will equate its high quality with that of the product.

In any case, viewers are unlikely to shut a placed product out of their consciousness. This helps solve a longstanding problem for advertisers- getting consumers to watch. Since the early days of television, viewers have walked away from their TVs during commercials, and newer technologies have made ad-shipping even easier. With digital video recorders (DVRs), people can record TV shows to watch later and can fast-forward through the commercial5. A survey in 2010 found that 53% of households in the United States with DVRs really do skip commercials. Many viewers now watch TV on their smartphones, which have a lot of “distraction media” like music and games. One study showed that when a commercial came on, 73% of people watching the show online switched to some form of distraction media.

AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY

Showcasing products is not free. In 2009, spending on product placement was $6.25 billion worldwide. More than half of that—$3.7 billion— was by U.S. companies. Financing product placement may be a better use of money than buying ordinary advertising. The average cost of a 30-second commercial on a U.S. to TV network is $175,000, so 10 minutes of exposure for a product would cost $3.5 million. For that amount of money, a product could get placement in an average TV show for three or four years.

Evidence suggests that product placement can really work. The first Transformers movie (2007), about robots that could change into cars and trucks, featured a yellow sports car called the Camaro. Sale of Camaros had so fallen off, and the Chevrolet car brand was not sure whether to keep producing them. Then came the Transformers movie. David Caldwell, an official at Chevrolet, says that Camaro sales have been increasing since the as movie came out, and 10a of buyers have purchased yellow ones. Product placers, however, should not presume that viewers will always react positively. In Australia, the first season of a TV series called The Block helped increase the sales of Black & Decker tools, which are often used in the series. However, the second season had too much placement. It lost many viewers who then perceived the show as just one long commercial.

TARGETS IN NEW MEDIA

Product-placers have to adapt to new media, and many companies have placed products in video games. For example, in the game Super Monkey Ball by Sega, every banana has a Dole company sticker on it. Finding the right medium, however, is hard. Online videos often include placements, but most videos have short lifespans. Even if a video goes viral, it will probably be mostly forgotten within three or four weeks. Furthermore, a product placement online could expose your company to ridicule, because Internet videos are often copied and changed to create joke videos. That is not at all helpful in your efforts to build a brand.

Still, the future of product placement, even online, is bright. Companies may eventually collect enough data about individual Internet users to target them with product-filled content that fits their tastes. If you like boats, your online weather report might show a boat in the background while a friend of yours sees a hotel with the same report. The best an advertiser can hope for is that people walking away from a movie or TV show have discussions about a character’s clothing, cars, or furniture as much as about the story itself. Conversations like this about video games, smartphone applications, and popular websites are the next great advertiser’s dream.