Product Placement Deal
The fact that in the movie I-Robot (2004), the main character is deliberately wearing Converse shoes, that Chevrolet is one of the most present car in the movie Twilight (2008), that Bollinger champagne shares the screen with Smirnoff vodka in Casino Royale (2006), and that OLGis the unavoidable brand in the movie Transformers 2 (2009), is certainly not accidental. Those branded products have been part of a “product placement deal” resulting from collaboration between product placement agencies, entertainment marketing managers and movie writers and producers to get their brands placed in their movie scenes (Russell, 2002). Indeed, “placing a product” consists in putting a product and/or a brand into a movie scene where it can be seen and/or its name heard (Karrh, 1994; Bressoud and Lehu, 2007). If the first brand placements appeared in novels two centuries ago, they have been developed with the movie industry (Turner, 2003; Newell and Salmon, 2004). Mainly since the end of the 1970's, several researches have contributed to a better understanding of this communication technique, referred as “hybrid” technique by Balasubramanian (1994) since the promotional intention is not explicitly shown (D'Astous and Chartier, 2000; Baker and Crawford, 1995), but is rather embedded within the entertainment. Its positive effect on viewers' attitudes (Fontaine, 2005), and particularly its potential impact on brand recognition and recall (Brennan, Dubas and Babin, 1999; d'Astous and Chartier, 2000) represent the main areas of the research knowledge. Faced up to media fragmentation and audience spreading, on the one hand, (Bressoud and Lehu, 2007) and to the rise of virtual promotion strategies allowing to skip traditional commercial messages (O'Neill and Barrett, 2004), on the other hand, advertisers are looking to re-establishing the link between their products and their consumers by inserting brand references into consumers' experience of mediated entertainment (Hackley and Tiwaskul, 2006). Thus, marketers play on different cognitive and emotional engagements with entertainment than with advertising since the point of entertainment marketing is to disguise the persuasive intent of the brand exposure (Hackley and Tiwaskul, 2006). As brand placement in movies seems to be well accepted (O'Reilly et al., 2005), and since it is less expensive than a 30-second television spot and can also be more effective because product placement inserts the brand into the consumer's experience with an intimacy that conventional promotion cannot match, it has become a communication technique ever more considered by advertisers (Karrh, McKee and Pardun, 2003).
The strategy of placing branded products in entertainment media is not a new concept (Russell and Belch, 2005). However, product placement was neither a well-organised nor a high-profile growth area in marketing communication until the 1980's with the film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and the successful unpaid-for placement of Reese's Pieces which results in 65% increase in sales (Schmoll et al, 2006). Marketers have progressively gained more control over product placement in exchange for considerable compensation (Balasubramanian, 1994; Nebenzahl & Secunda, 1993). This paper seeks to renew attention towards product placements in cinema movies as a marketing communication vehicle in context of a remarkable growth in the entertainment industry in recent years (McKechnie and Zhou, 2003; Eliashberg and Shugan, 1997; Van der Waldt, 2005). As a matter of fact, film audiences have been, particularly, revived as a result of the advent of multiplexes (e.g. Kinepolis multiplexes) and increased household penetration of internationally broadcast cable and satellite channels as well as DVD players. Overall, these developments have permitted to offer cost-effective commercial opportunities for brand exposure to receptive audiences and thereby to use product placement in movies as an alternative promotional vehicle that has the ability to build awareness, generate recall and shape attitudes (Howard-Williams, 1993; Dunnett and Hoek, 1996; Brennan et al., 2004; Berglund and Spets, 2003). For instance, a typical movie with international distribution can reach over one hundred million consumers as it moves from cinema to its DVD release and finally to its diffusion on TV (Vollmers & Mizerski, 1994; Moster et al., 2002). Other researchers have reported other significant benefits including high exposure, support of other media, source of positive associations, and high recall rate (Belch and Belch, 1999). Within this context, product placement takes place as an emerging phenomenon in so far as it is widely practised in Hollywood movies, but less experienced in European movies (Read, 1999).
A lot of research has already been devoted to product placement in movies (Karrh, 1998). So far, the researchers have mostly centred on product placement's efficacy associated with its impact on memory (Babin and Carder, 1995, 1996; Gupta, Balasubramanian and Klassen, 2000; Gupta and Lord, 1998; Nelson, 2002; Russell, Norman, and Heckler, 2004; Karrh, 1994; Ong and Meri, 1994; Vollmers and Mizerski, 1994), on its ethical acceptability (Gupta and Gould, 1997; Nebenzahl and Secunda, 1993), on its impact on viewers' attitudes (d'Astous and Seguin, 1999; Russell, 2002), and behaviour (Auty and Lewis, 2004; Russell and Puto, 1999). Nevertheless, most researches explains efficiency using the way the placement is made, meaning that the results are related to the influence of the placements modalities on efficiency (Bressoud and Lehu, 2007; La Ferle and Edwards, 2006). Three placements modalities are usually differentiated: prominence, audiovisual and plot insertion. Prominent placements when “the product is made highly visible by the virtue of the size and/or position on the screen or its centrality to the action in the scene” (Gupta and Lord, 1998). Audiovisual modality refers to “the appearance of the brand on the screen” and/or to “the brand being mentioned in a dialogue” (Russell, 2002). Finally, plot insertion refers to the degree to which the brand is integrated to the story plot (Russell, 1998; Redondo, 2006). Consequently, the outcomes of such classification range from subtle appearances of the brand on the screen to highly integrated placements in the storyline, such as the recent Transformers' Chevrolet Camaro car (Russel, 2002). In today's oversaturated and fragmented advertising landscape, consumers may feel that the use of brand names in movies simply reflects the producers' efforts to enhance the realism of their movies (Hirschman, 1988; Holbrook and Grayson, 1986; Solomon and Englis, 1994). However, in cases where the brand takes a major role in a scene, or where its presence in the storyline might look suspect, audiences may realize that it was placed there to affect their judgments, and they may counterargue them just as they do traditional advertising messages (Friestad and Wright, 1995).
Besides, the practice of product placement has changed dramatically over the past 20 years, from one that was relatively local and unsophisticated to one that is often global in scope and purpose (Karrh et al., 2001). Advertisers are increasingly using brand placement as a tool for inexpensively achieving substantial reach, enhancing memory for the brand and creating positive associations with programme characters (Karrh, 1995; Pardun and McKee, 1997). As the practice has become more common and visible, researchers have learned more about audience reactions to brand placement activities. But a review of these studies on product placement indicates a major gap in the literature: they were mainly conducted in the United States, and therefore, have not focused on product placement as a global phenomenon. Nonetheless, the general globalization of marketing communications (DeLorme, 1998; Grein and Grould, 1996), and the fact that many movies often are produced for multinational audiences raise the issue of how consumers in other countries perceive product placements. Thus, considering product placement on a cultural basis is important from a marketing perspective in terms of the issue of standardization versus adaptation. According to this concern and the inflexibility of product placements relative to some other forms of promotion, this paper aim, in addition, at addressing the research gap in the international literature by investigating cross-national perceptions of the efficacy and acceptability of product placements. Such broader understanding of audience attitudes might also help to explain and predict the impact of placements on audiences worldwide.
This increase in product placements and the institutionalization of the industry indicate that advertisers are using the technique to influence consumers brand attitudes (Avery and Ferraro, 2000). Critics have already voiced concerns about the increasing embeddedness of marketing efforts within cinema movies (Wasko, Phillips, and Purdie, 1993). Despite the increasing popularity of the technique of product placement among marketers, there is relatively little scientific evidence regarding how, even whether, it affects people. Several studies found preliminary support for the impact of mode and prominence on recall and recognition of brands placed within films (Babin and Carder, 1996; d'Astous and Seguin, 1999; Gupta and Lord, 1998; DeLorme and Reid, 1999; Hirschman and Thompson, 1997). However, surveys investigating viewers' attitudes toward the practice of product placement (Gupta and Gould, 1997) also indicate that other factors, such as too much repetition, obvious commercial motivations, or the use of ethically charged products, are less acceptable. As a result, the spectator's attitude toward the movie influences the efficiency of product placements (Johnstone and Dodd, 2000; Fontaine, 2002), and the advertiser could have chosen the movie on the basis of the attitude it was supposed to generate. On the other hand, whether the ways of placing the brand differ, the main purpose of obtaining brand recall and improving brand image remain. That's why, for instance, the new BMW Mini ran out of stock in the USA after starring in the remake of the hit film The Italian Job (2003) (Gupta and Lord, 1998; Karrh, 1998; Hackley, 2005). There are countless examples of how product's appearance in a movie resulted in an increase in brand performance (Morton and Friedman, 2002). What began as a practice for authenticating scenes in movies has emerged as a viable alternative for product promotion and opened the door to integrated advertising labelled “branded entertainment” (Hudson and Hudson, 2006).
Despite the fact that successful movies ability to cultivate individuals' attitudes and perceptions due to the placed product's connectedness to the plot (d'Astous and Seguin, 1999; Russell, 2002) and the viewers' parasocial relationships with the characters (Russell, Norman, and Heckler, 2004) is recognized (O'Guinn and Shrum, 1997), little evidence of attitude change resulting from product placement is, so far, nonexistent. Understanding how product placement works on spectators' minds remains an open empirical question. While prior research suggests that consumers sometimes notice the brands placed in their movies, we do not know whether such placements influence brand attitudes and purchasing behaviour (Russell and Stern, 2006) according to the hierarchy-of-effects (HoE) model, which temporally orders message outcomes into three broad classes, cognition, affect, and conation, that respectively correspond to consumers' mental stages for awareness/understanding, interest/liking, and purchase intention/buying a product (Barry 1987; Barry and Howard 1990). Most placement studies are preoccupied with cognitive effects and ignore the affective or conative outcomes (Balasubramanian et al., 2006). Moreover, results from quantitative and qualitative analyses in this area often differ manifestly. All these points highlight the need for an exploratory study to understand product placement effects. In the present study, we address this research gap by identifying the psychological effect of product placements in cinema movies and bringing new insights about the viewer's contact with the movie and the brand placement. Before discussing the results of the empirical study, this paper will examine the limited extant literature on viewers' perceptions of product placement and the relative effectiveness of this marketing technique, followed by the justification of the research methodology adopted. Then, after the results of the empirical analysis, key findings will be discussed, and conclusions from consumers and practitioners' perspective will be drawn.
