Nikita Arora's Blog

In reference to Josh’s blog post (Brandwashing in Movies) about the recently popularized type of advertisement called ‘Product Placement’, I absolutely agree with his analysis of it. Instead of spending money on direct forms of advertisemnt during the TV shows and having people drift their attention to other quick tasks, the advertising gurus have switched to this indirect yet overly powerful form of advertisement which involves branded entertainment.

Basically product placement, or embedded marketing is a form of advertising where goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, like movies, music videos or news programs. For example- when you see you favorite star sporting a cool Nike hoodie, or drinking Coca-Cola, or wearing a Rolex watch…..it’s not just by co-incidence that he/she happens to wear/eat/drink them. A lot of work goes behind planning on these minute details. And the best part is that advertisers don’t need to create an actual ad to market the product…all they need to do is place the product in the show/movie/music video, and people will notice it!

I personally believe that there are many advantages of this non-traditional form of advertising. Firstly, the scope of product placement substantively surpasses that of the regular ads, both in terms of qualitative and quantitative measures. And although advertisers regularly create ads with famous personalities and try to depict the association of the product with them (which is by the way one of the most expensive forms of advertisement), Product Placement has enabled an even stronger association, and in a comparably cheaper way.

Lets take a look at this: In the middle of your favorite TV show, you see this new ad of  the Schlitz beer with its ‘go for the Gusto’ tagline. The humor in the ad and the old infamous tagline might influence you to go buy the Milwaukee-brewed beer. But instead, if you went to watch Contraband this weekend, (the thriller starring Mark Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale), apart from all the action, you’d have surely noticed a lot of Schiltz beer throughout the movie as well. And since the movie debuted at the top of box office this weekend, the marketers at Schlitz shall be celebrating as there revenue will be directly influenced as a result of the movie’s success. 

This is the power of the Product Placement. It is so silent that you don’t see it actually directly targeted at you… you see it already embedded in the environment around you, and wonder why you don’t have it. And then, you quietly get up and buy it. And all of this, silently generates money!

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9i46PJRRUw , http://productplacement.biz/201201193882/branded-entertainment/schlitz-product-placement-in-contraband.html , http://productplacement.biz/ )