The Art of Brand Placement
This is not just a “clickbait” image. I’m going to talk about Homer and his Duff beer later. First things first.
We love movies and TV shows, right? Yeah, we do! After music, it’s probably the next two things people all around the have in common: discussing that episode of ‘Game of Thrones’ or how funny ‘Modern Family’’s last episode was. It make us living the life of other people for 40 or 50 minutes. Dreaming their dreams and crying their loss. We connect with the characters and their scripted dialogues. We are funny like that: we hate our daily lifes but we love fictional stories. And the more we connect with it, the more we want to be like those fictional characters. Not totally, of course, because that would be a symptom of something more complicated. I’m talking about dressing the same clothes, drinking the same drink or driving the same car. And that’s fine. The
brands say “Thank you!”.
That’s how “brand placement” works. Is the inclusion of a branded product in media, usually without explicit reference to the product. The point is to increase consumer awareness of the brand and product and strengthen demand. In other words, brands pay their way to reach our eyes. They want us, the viewers, to notice them. Well, and it works. It can actually be much more cost-effective than other types of marketing. But expensive.
Heineken made it big in the recent James Bond’s ‘Skyfall’. The brand paid a reported $45 million for a product placement in 2012’s James Bond movie. The deal included a 30-second commercial starring Daniel Craig as James Bond, a branded web game featuring Craig and co-star Bérénice Marlohe, and a scene in the movie in which Craig turns down his signature cocktail for a bottle of Dutch beer.
According to CNBC, 1983’s ‘Risky Business’ saved Ray-Ban’s business, 2003’s ‘Lost In Translation’ gave a lot of screening time to Suntory Whisky, and 1971’s ‘Dirty Harry’ contributed mightily to the popularity of the .44 Magnum handgun.
But don’t let this fool you. There are disadvantages by using this marketing move, and they can matter big time. For example, if the brand placement is excessive, it can ruin the plot of the movie for being too distracting. Another aspect is the fact that some movies may have so many different product placements from within the same industry, that the effect of the advertising is almost null. At the same time, directors can’t do something if the amount of products in the shot is cluttering the screen, making our lifes difficult when it comes to follow the acting. In some cases, less is more.
But there’s a solution to every problem. You can always go with faking it. Don’t get scared. It’s actually a very vulgar technique.
Sometimes, using unauthorized real trademarks for movies or TV shows could trigger legal action by their owners. If any director wants to use Apple phones for a movie, he needs to have a brand written consent for it. If not, it’s a very expensive risk. That’s an advantage by using fictional brands. Another one is that all its specifications can be invented. You can say that the lead character’s car was made by Katyra Motors (I’m terrible when it comes to make up false names, I know!), it has two engines and a jacuzzi in the back, and that it can fly from NY to Paris in half hour. Now that would be awesome, right? And you can say that, because it’s all fake.
However, there’s some disadvantages when using fake brands. For one, it impacts our ability to relate with the actor and, or the scene. It creates an alternative economy that exists only behind the screen. And for a fan of a show, it’s kind of sad. Especially if we are demanding fans. We want the shows to be realistic as possible, in order for us to understand every single detail of the plot. If we see fake, it’s kind of strange. At least in the beginning. We’re not saying it doesn’t work, because it does. One perfect example of success is Breaking Bad’s Los Pollos Hermanos.
And, by the way, if you don’t have enough imagination to create a new fake brand, a simple Google search can provide you a couple of websites with all kind of products, licence free.
Here’s a fun fact to cheer you up through this reading. What has this next image in common?
Yes. They’re all using the same newspaper. Different shows from different years, but the same newspaper. According to this article, the newspaper “was first printed in the 1960’s, and was offered back then as a ‘period paper’, suited for the printing style of the decade.”. It was used as a joke. And that joke stuck. Let’s move on!
Back to the story. Sometimes, brand placement grows to outside of the movie or TV show story. How this effects our relation with the brand? Ask ‘The Simpsons’.
I told you the top image of this article was not clickbait. Duff Beer is a fake brand of beer, that it became famous mostly thanks to Homer Simpson, that originally started as a fictional beverage on The Simpsons. According to wikipedia, “it has become a real brand of beer in a number of countries without permission or consent from its original creator, Matt Groening, and has resulted in legal battles with varying results.”. However, the official beer is only sold in The Simpsons Ride at Universal Studios. In 2016, TIME magazine elected the brand as one of the most influential fake companies in the show business.
If you ask us, use brand placement wisely. Don’t do it like ‘Hawaii Five-0’ did, please! That’s just too much.
The Perfect Mediocre
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