Impact of Brand Integration in Television on Consumer Behavior Baseeruddin Ansari

Chapter 1
Introduction to Brand Integration:
How Brand Appear on Television

Rizvi Institute of Management Studies and Research

Impact of Brand Integration in Television on Consumer Behavior Baseeruddin Ansari

1.1 Brand Integration in Television

Product placement in the movies, according to some Researchers involves incorporating
brands in movies in return for monetary or for some promotional or other consideration. Such
placement (including that in other media such as television) has also been viewed as a hybrid
of advertising and publicity. Researchers has indicated the importance of product placement
as an addition to the promotion mix.

However, the general globalization of marketing communications, the interest in integrating

them in Integrated and Globally Integrated Marketing Communications programs, and the
fact that many movies play to and often are produced for multinational audiences raise the
issue of how consumers in other countries perceive product placements.

Academic research has described the impact of product placement on brand attitudes, brand
recall, and brand salience, as well as on consumer attitudes and experiences toward products
placed in television. There has been conclusive proof that viewers are able to correctly
recognize brands placed in films and that consumers do not really mind seeing products
placed in motion pictures.1

1.1.1 Characteristics of Brand Appearance

Within each program, each brand appearance had been identified by name and product
category. Each brand appearance was subjectively rated as to the valance of its portrayal as
either very negative, negative, neutral, positive, or very positive. Brand placements were
coded for characteristics relating to visual information, verbal information, or both.

A. Visual Characteristics

If displayed visually, the manner in which the brand/product was displayed was
distinguished. Primary brand placements were defined as seeing the brand, product, or
company name displayed on an actual product. Secondary brand placements occurred when
the brand, product, or company name or logo could be seen on a different item other than the
actual product. For example, Coca-Cola may appear on a shirt of a main character.

Brand placements were coded as “traditional advertisements” if the brand name was
presented in more of a traditional advertising context, such as on a billboard seen during a
sporting event or a logo flashed on the screen, or even a brand name displayed as text in a

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Brand Integration - Branded_Entertainment_A_New_Advertising_Technique

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Rizvi Institute of Management Studies and Research
Impact of Brand Integration in Television on Consumer Behavior Baseeruddin Ansari

game show question. Other visual characteristics of the appearances were recorded to assess
the prominence of the brand in relation to the programming.

B. Verbal Characteristic

Brand appearances that contained a verbal element is known as Verbal characteristic of brand
placement. It refers to the number of time brand was referred to in the television, and whether
the mention was essential to the scene. Similar to visual interaction, the present the character
verbally interact with the product to describe its importance.

1.2 Product Placement in Television

In considering how product placements function, understand that the consumers connected
the world of the film, including product placements, with their social world, as well as
consumption-specific aspects of their own everyday life.

The reason has been because, transformational and affect transfer processes are at work in
the establishment of linkages between a movie or television show and the product placed.
These findings of linkages could be important for buying behaviour since the decision to
purchase a product is likely to be the result of such linkages. They could also be significant in
another way: consumers will attach different ethical meanings to product placements in terms
of their acceptability, i.e., consumers carry their ethical perceptions of marketing various
products into how they perceive them as product placements.

Difficulties in reaching consumers through traditional advertising methods are for instance 
associated with overexposure, which makes it harder for marketers to penetrate the market 
and influence consumers.

The product placement industry is a fast growing multi‐billion-dollar industry and is soon
believed to outperform traditional advertising and marketing. In 2006, global paid product
placements were valued at $3.07 billion and global unpaid product placements $7.45 billion
according to the research company PQ Media. Product placements in television are the
dominant choice of marketers, accounting for 71.4% of global spending. Since it is highly
believed that product placement will be the future of television advertising, it reinforces an
interest to shed further light into this phenomenon, therefore being the focus of this thesis.

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Impact of Brand Integration in Television on Consumer Behavior Baseeruddin Ansari

1.2.1 Problem Identification

Product placement concerns incorporating commercial content in a purposeful way into a
non‐commercial situation, hence, it is branding, created through the mixing of advertising
and entertainment. Product placement is becoming common practice in today’s marketing
world, and can be experienced in a vast amount of mainstream media such as movies, TV
series and shows, computer games, blogs, music and music videos, books, theatre plays, radio
and etc.

The motivation behind the use of product placement is that the advertiser is able to expose the
brand to the consumer in an indirect manner, and therefore to some extend avoid the
consumers’ defence mechanism and learned resistance toward traditional advertising. This
becomes possible, because the consumer is in a comfortable situation consuming
entertainment, such as a computer game or TV show, when the exposure happens, so the
consumer is therefore not expecting to be exposed to advertising. At the same time, it gives
the advertiser the opportunity to expose the brand to the consumer in a natural and realistic
setting, which altogether should lead to positive attitudes toward the brand

The product placement field is rapidly advancing in practice and no Hollywood production
today is without product placement. Still, it is seen as a quite new academic field of study. As
an academic research field, it is only around 15 years old, and most research has so far
mainly described and investigated the use of product placement as a marketing tool in
general. disagreement also remains regarding the definition of product placement, the reason
for the methods growth, its effect and how to actually measure the effects (Langer, 2010).
Hence, no apparent theoretical framework that describes product placement exist product
placement effectiveness measurements methods are far behind traditional advertising
measurement methods, and research still lacks results and findings for its growth and its
effects on advertisers, media producers and consumers. This problem is also experienced in
practice as the industry according to lacks knowledge, and marketers therefore have to base
decisions on intuition and opportunities that emerge along the way.

Brands are nowadays considered the company’s most valuable asset. Strong brand equity
results in a different outcome due to a marketing activity of a branded product or service,
compared to the same product or service not branded. By making products or services
memorable and easily recognizable in the eyes of consumers and superior in quality,
companies create rand equity.

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Impact of Brand Integration in Television on Consumer Behavior Baseeruddin Ansari

Due to this, the brand equity concept reinforces the importance of choosing the right
marketing strategies, so consumers will have the right type of experiences that ultimately
become linked to the brand.

Considering that product placement is a communication tool designed to build brand equity,
with hope of leading to increase in sales, it becomes highly appropriate to examine to what
extent it influences brand equity. Meaning, whether viewers only notice the placed brands,
therefore only influencing brand awareness, or if product placement is effective enough to
influence viewers’ attitudes toward the brand that could further initiate a change in behaviour.
Given the fact that movies have been the main focus among researchers in measuring product
placement effectiveness, it opens up an opportunity to shed light into the effectiveness in
other types of media. Since television viewers are believed to be far larger in numbers than
movie viewers, including the television viewers’ chance of developing relationships with
their favourite characters

Researchers suggests that product placements in TV shows could be more effective in

influencing brand equity than product placements in movies. Moreover, advertisements differ
in portrayal and can be seen as either informational or transformational. Where informational
advertisements emphasize on product functionality, transformational advertisements tap into
people’s emotions. Taking this a step further in relation to product placement, literature
review has not revealed studies that investigate differences in effectiveness between
informational or transformational product placements. Investigating the difference in
effectiveness between these two approaches is believed to be very relevant, and could provide
some knowledge to the product placement research field.

1.3 Brand Placement as one of the Unconventional

Promotional Tool
Consumer today is more conscious and demanding; that is why conventional way of product
brand promotion is not enough. Nowadays, marketers try to reach for unconventional
marketing tools. To such kind forms of marketing communication include:

 Ambient media (advertising, marketing)—alternative and innovative solutions in the

public space and generate consumer astonishment by engaging them.
 Guerrilla marketing—unconventional, most often controversial actions connecting
different media based on low cost, prepared specially for a specific client, and are
implemented in the short term, often on the edge of the law.

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Impact of Brand Integration in Television on Consumer Behavior Baseeruddin Ansari

 Word-of-mouth marketing—marketing activities aiming to get messages across the

consumers via direct “spontaneous” verbal communication; the phenomenon of
rumours is being used in this kind of marketing for spreading the information in the
specific target group.
 Buzz marketing—global madness, euphoria, and hysteria, encompassing informal
discussion about the particular product, service, and company as well as giving people
a reason to talk about the brand, goods and services, and the possibility of the
establishment of this conversation.

The main carriers for product placement are mass media and entertainment such as movies,
serials, TV shows, video games, books, or theatre . The modern consumer of the
entertainment mass media in everyday life rarely focuses all its attention on the content
transmitted in the mass media. Some studies suggest that more than 50% of consumers while
watching TV also perform other tasks. The source of destruction can be cooking, babysitting,
phone call, and multitasking with other mass media such as an electronic book or some smart
devices. This powerful marketing tool takes beginnings of filmmaking in the 1890s. The
forerunners of product placement were such manufacturers as Admiral Cigarettes, Pabst’s
Milwaukee Beer, and Nestle in the early 1900s. Of course, product placement in those days
differs the current one but still represents the first steps in the mass film production.

A good example of brand placement was a movie “She wanted a Ford” created in 1916. A
brand placement is not just a commercial of a product. It is a subtle way to integrate brand
with the plot. While movies and TV shows are at the forefront of using placement techniques,
the practice gains its popularity in the other media such as radio, music, books, or video
games. There can be a lot of factors that stimulate the growth of popularity of brand
placement—Internet growth, appearance of new media like video-game.

Brand placement is gaining its popularity. On one hand, this tool is less expensive than a 30-s
TV spot, and sometimes even more effective and on the other hand provides an access to the
wide audience. But the fact that a brand appears every 3 min in primetime television shows
and media forecasting data suggests a yearly increase above 10% of the 8 US$ billion spent
in global scale on movie and television product brand placement (for 2012–2016).

Research showed that brand placement can be a good alternative to a traditional advertising
especially when consumers nowadays try to avoid commercials. But the program image
played an important role in the changes in brand image.

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Impact of Brand Integration in Television on Consumer Behavior Baseeruddin Ansari

However, there are some objections to the brand placement because not every brand is suited
for placement in all contexts. If the brand does not fit to the story or plot, the placement can
actually be detrimental.

1.4 Brand Placement – A calling for Marketers

The increased competition about quality and price forces the company to take planned
actions, ensuring their distinction and originality of the offering services. A tool for achieving
a competitive advantage is the brand, reflecting on one hand the essence of the business and
focusing on associations around the name and logo and on the other hand representing the
axis of activities within marketing communications. Functioning of the business is associated
with making appropriate strategic decisions in terms of brand positioning associated with
custom tools, such as product and brand placement.

This is a consequence of the differentiation of the product offer as a result of the needs of
consumers in terms of quantity, requirements, and preferences of consumers. Product and
brand placement refer to both the visible and invisible parts of the brand, referring to the
social nature of the consumption of products with a well-known brand. Brand positioning
uses the product and brand placement in movies, entertainment programs, and books and
other printed materials and video games.

The growing popularity of this tool is the result of its efficiency on the one hand and on the
other a consequence of the intensification competitive activities and the desire to ensure the
proper brand’s market position, the product and brand placement will thrive in the described
media while introducing new media guarantee reaching to wider group of consumers. That is
why, it is so important to understand how the system of product placement works.

In the near future, some research actions will be taken which will help to understand the
mechanism of brand placement and how it works from the inside. Knowledge is very
important not only for researchers but also for marketers and consumers, because on the one
hand marketers can use it for successful selling process, and on the other hand, it will be
possible for consumers to control the amount and frequency of advertisements.

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