Product Placement

Essay by mad6248College, UndergraduateA+, February 2008

download word file, 5 pages 4.6

Downloaded 31 times

Brief summary of what product placement advertising is, how it is used and some recent examples of effective product placement.Product placement is the process of integrating commercial products in the media. The concept is to move away from in-your-face ads, where the product is the protagonist and where mini-movies or semi-documentary bits feature real life, as a product logo hangs in the background. Ideally the best way to use product placement is to incorporate it into the storyboard of whatever media is being used in order for the consumer to be reached by the product in the most effective manner.

It is essential that the consumer does not feel like he or she is being bombarded by the advertiser. Product placement should be almost seamless to the consumer in order to provide just the right amount of reality to a show. Just because having a Coke or a Pepsi in a show or movie makes it seem more real that having a can marked "Soda" doesn't mean that the product should be shoved in our faces in order to gain brand recognition.

If done in a natural way, product placement can be a great way to disseminate information because the consumer has little or no control over what he or she sees in the course of a programming.

How product placement is practicedProduct placement is practiced in a number of ways. It can either happen naturally, it can be arranged with a certain amount of the product as compensation, or it can be arranged with financial compensation. The simplest form is a glimpse of a company logo in a movie, television series, game, or other media. More intricate forms of product placement involve weaving a product into the storyboard of a show or movie, thus greatly increasing the involvement...