Nowadays, we can observe how all sorts of companies try to position their brands by every form possible. Consequently, this is why advertisers always find new creative ways to get to the company´s target market and to possible new clients by promoting the companies´ products, for example by means of placing the companies´ brands in movies or in TV programs as a way to encourage people to act as their favorite actor/actress.
Marketers know that brand placement is a successful form of advertisement because this offers them several advantages over other advertising media, especially cost efficient communication and an advantage in the fact that films can be selected to reach that target consumers who may be difficult to reach with more conventional advertising methods. Associating brands with particular actors, films or contexts allows the marketer to associate a brand with congruent lifestyle or usage situations, because films offer brands the full sight, sound, and motion capabilities they do not have access to in radio and television.
Due to the success of this type of advertisement, there are hundreds of movies that show any type of brand placement. However, three examples I could mention of recent movies that I have watched in the past few days and where we can observe brands placement, could be the Disney movie Enchanted, The Bucket List movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, and obviously Sex and the City with Sarah Jessica Parker.
In the Enchanted movie we can observe, how once upon a time in a world of singing forest animals, a dashing prince and his soon-to-be-princess path to happiness takes an odd detour due to the interference of a jealous queen, who literally pushes her out of the brand-free kingdom of Andalusia into the harsh and glittery real world of New York City. A surprised princess (Giselle) gawks at the concentration of brands jostling for her attention in the patch of concrete and steel that is Times Square. Kodak, AOL, Bank of America, DHL, McDonalds, Loews, Virgin Records and Coca-Cola billboards and marquees appear over her.
Moreover, another movie I have just watched in which we can find a lot of brand placements is The Bucket List. In this one we can observe how indirectly, as the movie goes on, advertisers promote brands as they tell you the story. The movie tells you the anecdote of two terminally ill men who cross off items on their list of things to do before they kick the bucket. Therefore, in their effort of taking advantage of their remaining days alive, the characters bought whatever they liked, or they did whatever they wanted to do before they died. In the movie we can observe how Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman use some products and cross off items on their list of the following brands:
Apple, Bell, Cadillac, Chock Full O’Nuts, Chrysler, Cisco, Ford, Ford Mustang, Hill-Rom, HP, Lacoste, Listerine, Los Angeles Dodgers, Mercedes, Motorola, Pepsi, Philips, Pontiac, Pyrotect, Rolls Royce, San Francisco Giants, Sharp, The North Face, The Riviera Hotel and Casino, Timberland, Toyota, United States Parachute Association, a fact that show us a great number of brand placements in the movie.
Finally, one of the best examples of brand placement is the Sex and the City film. This movie has been named “Film Whore” of the year for being the film that most “sold out” for brand placement in the fourth annual Brandcameo Product Placement Awards from Brandchannel. The blockbuster’s partners included Mercedes-Benz, Coty fragrances and Skyy vodka, as well as the jeweller H Stern, Glaceau Vitaminwater, Coca-Cola and Bag Borrow. Moreover, other brands featured at the film were: Louis Vuitton’s, adidas, American Airlines, Apple, BlackBerry, Botox, Burberry, Carolina Herrara, Cartier, Chanel, Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, Christian Louboutin, Christie's, Clean & Clear, Cuisinart, Cup Noodles, Dove, Duane Reade, e.p.t., Entertainment Weekly, Escada, Ford, Four Seasons, Garnier Fructis, Gucci, Harvard University, Heinz, Hello Kitty, Henri Bendel, Hershey's, HSBC, IWC, KeyFood, Kit Kat, Lanvin, Lincoln, L'Oreal, Louis Vuitton, Lumi, M&M's, Manhattan Mini Storage, Marie Claire, Mercedes, Merrill Lynch, MetLife, Motorola, Netflix, New York Magazine, New York Post, New York Public Library, Nike, Nivea, Oscar de la Renta, Pantene, Piazza Sempione, Post-It Notes, Prada, Pret a Manger, Princeton University, Roger Vivier, Salvatore Ferragamo, Scoop, Skyy, Smartwater, Sony, Sprint, Starbucks, Swarovski, Tiffany & Co., TV Guide, Vera Wang, Versace, VitaminWater, Vivienne Westwood, Vogue, Wall Street Journal, among others. And because of these huge amounts of brand placements, Sex and the City film was labeled by president of marketing at the film's distributor New Line Cinema as "The Super Bowl for women" in reference to the event ability to attract hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising.
In conclusion, I believe that brand placement in movies, programs, etc. is a vital tool for marketers because they know that the aspiration of customers to be like their favorite artists (having their artist´s lifestyle and therefore to buy the same products the artist is using) increases as clients are exposed to more and more product placements. For instance, Ray-Ban sunglasses experienced a 55% gain in sales following the prominent use by Tom Cruise in 1983's Risky Business. Therefore, as this case, similar success stories for other brands firmly established the importance of brand placement. For that reason, in the present days more and more companies are willing to appear in contexts other than film, including music videos and video games, in any type of verbal mention in dialogue, in the actual use of the product by a character, in visual displays such as corporate logos or on a vehicle or billboard, or even as a set of decoration, or in little snatches of actual radio or television commercials.
