My Idea My Opinion

With the prevailing use of product placements in the movies and TV shows, we are being more and more aware of those brands appearing countless times in a film. Nowadays, those Big Brands, like Sony,  however, are promoting their own products instead of other brands in their movies. For example, in Abe Sauer’s blog, Sony Masters Self-Product Placement, closeups of Sony Products(such as vaio) and Sony billboards are found in the film produced by Sony Pictures.

With multiple product lines, some companies are doing self-product placements to promote their products in the films, TV shows etc. produced by themselves. In this way, they are making efficient use of their marketing budget since communication between segments in the same company is usually more effective and time and money spent searching for the best brand to carry their product placements will be saved. As a result, Sony uses self-product placements in The Smurfs and The Priest, promoting their film, product and actress at the same time, and it looks like a perfect win-win strategy.

However, this really depends on the purpose of these product placements. Using self-product placements is targeting the brand’s current market, which is market penetration method for the growth strategies. Since the Sony products are already reaching the maturity of its product life cycle, they might considering developing new segments and markets to grab more market share and add diversification to their product assortment. Therefore, if the placement is in an effort to reach and develop new segments and new markets, it would be a better idea to do product placements with other renowned brands instead of promoting in their own films and shows.

On top of that, self-product placements may not be convincing enough as their brand would certainly say this is a perfect product for they are the producer themselves. It is the company’s own word.

All in all, the company just need to think twice before stepping into self-product placements since it may not the win-win strategy as it appeared.