1. Why Brand Placement rather than Product Placement

1.1 The Relationship Between Brands and Products
The primary reason that we discuss brand placements rather than product placements lies in the difference between brands and products. A brand is a product, but one that adds other dimensions that differentiate it in some way from other products designed to satisfy the same need. More specifically, what distinguishes a brand from its unbranded commodity counterpart and give it equity is the sum total of consumers' perceptions and feelings about the product's attributes and how they perform, about the brand name and what it stands for, and about the company associated with the brand[1]. In addition, brands also provide a number of valuable functions, including greater loyalty, less vulnerability to competitive marketing actions and crises, larger margins, greater cooperation and support, increased marketing communication effectiveness, possible licensing opportunities, and additional brand extension opportunities[2]. What advertisers nowadays are attempting to place are brands rather than mere products.

1.2 Difference Between Brand Placement and Product Placement
Product placement dates back to at least the early 1950s when Gordon's Gin paid to have Katharine Hepburn's character in "The African Queen" toss loads of their product overboard. Since then, there have been countless placements in thousands of movies, TV programs, video games, and beyond[3]. In the wake of increasing emphasis being placed on brands instead of products by marketers, brand placements have already been widely adopted by advertisers. To be more specific, what audiences are facing at present are mostly brand placements instead of product placements. The cause for this transformation rests with not only the distinction between brands and products, but also the advantages of brand placements over product placements with regards to their own features. While product placements merely display the product in a movie or on TV, brand placement highlights not only the brand but also its uses and attributes as they are discussed or demonstrated. On one hand, with brand placement the brand is fully integrated with the story or actors on the ground that it is discussed or used. Yet with product placement, the most usual situation is that the product just shows up in the background with no mention of it. For instance, A Pepsi advertisement on a subway is something common and is probably not going to have the same effect when Spider-man drinks that Pepsi in the movie[4]. The former is product placement while the later is brand placement, which has the spirit of Pepsi brand expressed by Spider-man. On the other hand, with brand placement, it is the brand, which is something emotional rather than merely physical that is placed in movies or TV, etc. While the MINI Couple was embedded in the movie “The Italian Job”, it is not only the excellent performance of MINI cars that was focused, what is more, the spirit of the MINI brand, which is ingenious, capable and vigorous, that attracts the audience and makes unforgettable impressions.

Figure 1 MINI cars in the film “The Italian Job” (2003)

Conclusively, brand placement, originating from product placement, is more advanced and satisfies the high expectations of today's marketing. Although most academics and researchers nowadays still describe this phenomenon as product placement, we term it brand placement in this paper.

2. Why Brand Placement is the Next Big Thing in Brand Communication

2.1 Declining effectiveness of traditional advertisements

2.1.1 Excessive advertising messages everywhere
People nowadays are surrounded with an excess of advertising messages. Advertisements look like the long shadows that follow human beings all the time wherever they are heading. Recently a media company has just announced that they would launch advertising at airport security checkpoints. [5] Indeed, traditional advertising is increasingly intruding on people's brains, even on previously untouched corners of life. Here is some supporting evidence[6]:

• The average 1970s city dweller was exposed to 500 to 2,000 advertising messages per day. Now, it's 3,000 to 5,000.
  
  
• In 2005, MTV viewers had to put up with 21% more prime-time commercials per hour than in 2004, says TNS Media Intelligence and media firm MindShare.
  
  
• There are now advertisement-supported TV screens at airports, gas stations, health clubs and on buses and subways. Wal-Mart has its own network. ABC signed with the In-Store Broadcasting Network to promote TV shows in Kroger supermarkets.
  
  
• Off-screen advertisements, such as lobby promotions, rose 18% to $75 million, according to the Cinema Advertising Council. The quantity of advertisements increases year by year, but unless human brain can catch up with the speed in processing things much faster, it is unlikely that the audience will be able to dedicate sufficient attention to most advertisements that marketers are expecting. Even worse, what these conventional advertisements have in common is that they are all intrusive and in-your-face, resulting in the fact that customers are getting tired of or even annoyed with them. As a consequence, these conventional advertisements, placed at high cost, will hardly achieve the anticipated objective.

2.1.2 New technology allows audiences to skip traditional advertisements
As an increasing proportion of audiences adopt new technologies such as TiVo and DVR in past several years, they are able to skip most of the conventional 30-seconds commercials that show up between programs, and the reach rate of such advertising methods becomes increasingly lower. Findings from a study conducted by Media Planning Group indicate that 90% of people with DVRs skip commercials in recorded programming—and just 16% watch the ads when viewing live TV, rather than doing something else or channel hopping.[7]” In addition, even if without TiVo, DVR or other recorders, audiences will still be able to skip these commercials by simply pressing a single button on the remote control. In order to regain audience attention that is indispensable for brand communication, advertisers have to be better or even transform their media strategies rather than persist on a once-brilliant approach that is already losing its market place. The 2007 advertisement spending outlook released by the Center for Media Research indicates that there will be a slight decrease in advertising spending share for conventional media including TV, newspapers, magazines, and radio. Here is the bar chart[8].

Figure 2 Shares of Media Across Major Channels, Center for Media Research

In addition, as manifested in a survey conducted by Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Forrester Research, 78% of 133 national advertisers interviewed, representing more than $20 billion worth of advertising, feel that traditional television advertising has become less effective in the past two years; 70% think that DVRs and video-on-demand will reduce or destroy the effectiveness of traditional 30-second commercials. Close to 60% say that they will spend less on conventional TV advertising; of those, 24% will cut their TV budgets by at least 25%[9]. In another survey, ANA also stated that 66% of the 117 marketers interviewed are engaged in brand placements and 62% of their placements funds are currently being shifted from traditional television budget, up from 52% in 2005[10]. The result of this survey reflects that a great many advertisers are attempting to integrate their brands into the programs themselves, instead of limiting their presence to commercials that are separated from the program. For example, Ford Motor Co. built a campaign in Europe around the James Bond adventure "Casino Royale" to launch its new Ford Mondeo there. [11]"

Figure 3 Ford Mondeo Sedan launched in the film “Casino Royale”(2005)

2.2 Advantages of Brand Placement

2.2.1 All the more audience-accepted
Compared with traditional advertisements such as the 30-second commercial, the most essential feature of brand placement lies in the fact that it is integrated with the program itself so that it will not be intrusive and in-the-face of the audience. As creative brand placements become fully plot-oriented and act seamlessly with the story, the program itself will be a realistic stage for the persuasive powers of advertisers. In other words, those brands are necessary properties of the program and therefore the audience will consider their coming on the scene as something reasonable and logical. Thus they will accept them or even be impressed rather than resist and ignore them as they would traditional advertisements. According to an investigation run by Hitwise Research, website traffic increased for companies who had their brands embedded in NBC's "The Apprentice." [12] Here is the table.

Figure 4 Selected Advertiser Performance Featured on “The Apprentice”

What we learn from this table that the visits to Unilever Dove’s website jumped sharply by 1512%, and the other brands all increased traffic to their websites. This indicates that audiences do not resist brand placement; on the contrary, they are impressed by the brand featured in the programs and therefore visited the companies’ websites for further information. What is more, if the brand is associated with celebrities, the effectiveness of brand placement will be much more notable by virtue of the audience's instinct to imitate. It is an inherent human characteristic that people tend to make themselves appear and behave similarly with others they adore, especially for young people. Here is a survey conducted by Harris Interactive in May 2006, which interviewed children ages 8 to 12 and teens ages 13 to 18 about their advertising viewpoints[13].

Figure 5 Attitudes of US children and Teens towards Advertising Tactics,

From the table we see that children both in 8-12 age group and 13-18 age group preferred to “have a famous person use their product” as their favorite advertising tactic. As a result, if a brand is associated with a top-star, the fans will follow their idol's taste and purchase what their idol has used in a film. For instance, when Tom Cruise wore Ray-Ban sunglasses in "Risky Business”, sales immediately jumped by over 50 percent[14]. In short, brand placement interacts with human nature so it is more easily accepted by audiences as opposed to traditional advertisements.

2.2.2 All the easier for delivering brand spirit
As mentioned above, the characters and story of the program let brand placement be all the more audience-accepted. It is also the program that offers advertisers a realistic stage to showcase the core value of a brand. According to a study released in November 2006 by Nielsen Media Research, brand placement in TV content boosts brand recognition by 20%[15]. This leads to the fact that advertisers take advantage of the characters and story of programs to demonstrate what the brand represents or stands for, or even harness the program to prove a brand's superiority over other competitors by fictionalizing a scene that one branded product beats out its rivals. Take the BMW brand in 007 movie "Tomorrow Never Dies" as an example. In this classic movie, a BMW 7 series car is embedded into the story and acts as one of James Bond's significant intelligent weapons to fight against his enemies.

Figure 6 BMW and Benz in 007’s movie “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1998)

Firstly, the BMW brand's spirit, appearing as driving-oriented, powerful, and sophisticatedly equipped, is thoroughly conveyed by both the charm of James Bond himself and the plot that shows Bond defeating his enemy in an ingenious way. Secondly, the BMW car in the movie triumphs over its rival Mercedes-Benz which is also one of BMW's major competitors in reality. With brand placement BMW gets the opportunity to express a message that it has remarkable superiority to Benz in equipment, driving-quality, and other similar aspects and the BMW brand is perfectly prepared for those customers who are pursuing an exciting, passionate, and energetic style of life. By means of brand placement, advertisers can convey attributes that it could not reveal directly and concretely to the audience in traditional commercials.

Conclusively, the declining effectiveness of traditional advertising and the advantages of brand placement itself show that brand placement is the next big thing in brand communication.

3. The Current Situation and Predicted Future of Brand Placement

3.1 Current Situation
By virtue of brand placement's supremacy, brand placement currently is already intensely prevalent in business. Here are some statistics detailing the level of brand placement in both TV and films during the year 2006.

3.1.1 Television
As calculated by The Nielsen Company, Coca-Cola ranks number one in the occurrences of brands placed in programs on broadcast network TV during the year 2006, with a total appearance of 3,346 times, more than twice of its follower Chef Revival, which appeared 1,592 times. On average, Coca-Cola comes into view 9 times per day, a figure that illustrates the incredible media share of the Coca-Cola brand. With respect to programs, FOX ‘s “American Idol” is the program with most brands placed in it, totaling 4,086 brands. And on average all of these programs have more than 1,500 brands embedded in them, which also reveals that popular programs in the United States are being highly exploited by marketers[16].

Figure 7 Top 10 Brands Placed in Broadcast Network TV, 2006

Figure 8 Top 10 Programs of Broadcast Network TV with Brand Placement, 2006

3.1.2 Films
According to brandchannel, of all the brands that appear in the number one film every week, Ford came appeared 17 times and therefore ranks number one in the occurrences of brand placements within the year 2006. Sony, Dodge, Motorola, Nike, Panasonic all appeared 7 times, so they stand side by side as number 10 in rank[17].

Speaking of films, “Talladega Nights” tops other films with a total 89 brand placements in it. In other words, within a duration of only 2 hours, this film with a weekend gross of $69 million featured an extraordinary quantity of brands, including 3M, Cadillac, Sony Vaio, etc. And for Tom Cruise’s film “Mission: Impossible III” with a peak weekend gross $72 million, there are also 44 brands embedded in it. As claimed by brandchannel, “a heart-thumping car chase featuring a Land Rover LR3 keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. A Lamborghini never gets above parking lot speed, cruising the Vatican in all its sexiness before getting blown to pieces. DHL adopts ‘Accepting Impossible Missions Daily’ as its tag line for being the movie’s official shipping and logistics partner.[18]”

Figure 9 Top 10 Films with Brand Placement, 2006

Figure 10 Top 10 Brands Placed in Films, 2006

The statistics above indicate that brand placement has already played a significant role in marketing campaigns. Although marketers are heavily exploiting these major media vehicles for brand placements, the opportunities for them abound. In other words, brand placement still has high potentials for growth.

3.2 Predicted Future of brand placement
According to PQ Media, the overall value of brand placement in 2005 was $4,245 million and it is predicted to hit $6,939 million in the year 2009. Here is the chart[19].

Figure 11 Overall Value Predicted for Brand Placement

Besides the fact that the total value of brand placement will keep rising year by year, the media vehicle for brand placement will also diversify into a number of new forms. For instance, marketers can avail themselves of Apple’s online shop iTunes—which has already sold 2 billion songs, 50 million TV shows, and 1.3 million movies—and emerging popular websites such as YouTube, MySpace, and video games whose sales soared to 6.5 billion in 2006, etc[20]. By expanding the usage of brand placement to a larger scale rather than limiting its presences to conventional channels such as TV programs or films, brand placement will certainly enjoy a brilliant future in the years ahead.

Conclusion

In summary, brand placement, being superior to product placement, is becoming an increasingly popular new form of brand communication due to both of the declining effectiveness of traditional advertisements and its own inherent advantages. Brand placement is already playing an important role in the current business of marketing communication and it is predicted to become even more valuable to marketers. In today's customer-centric market place, the basic rule of brand placement is to be plot-oriented and integrated seamlessly into the content of the program. Only in this way will brand placement be widely accepted rather than intrusive, and distinguish itself from traditional marketing communication approaches.

(Source: Interbrand)