If you are tiring of the hype about how your brand can’t possibly survive the next week without a social media strategy, you may be interested in another quieter revolution that is about to go live on our TV screens. On the 28th February product placement goes live on UK TV. Whilst this doesn’t directly involve a computer (unless someone submits one), this is a significant new media opportunity for UK advertisers.
Earlier this week an edition of Coronation Street (the UK’s leading and longest running soap) featured a kitchen shot which included a packet of, I think, ‘Honey Nut Cheerios’. Take note, that’s not ‘Cheerios’ or ‘Honey Nut Loops’ but ‘Honey Nut Cheerios’. If like me you find these sub-text jokes by ITV’s production teams rather amusing you’ll be sad to know that their days are almost certainly numbered. But all is not lost; the commercial opportunites around product placement are set to mushroom and that’s good news for advertisers.
From February 28th we can expect to see more popular high street brands making star appearances on the breakfast tables of some of the UK’s leading programmes. The opportunities are of course almost endless. Many TV programmes feature kitchens, kitchen tables, cars, clothes, shoes, TVs, mobile phones, T-shirt logos, food products and drinks to name but a few. As the year progresses we are likely to see more branded products appearing more overtly in programme content. This raises two questions for advertisers and marketers.
First, how do brands make it work? I see product placement as being a bit like sponsorship where the route to impact, acceptance and increased brand salience is through careful targeting of content, environments and associations. A brand that makes the right association with a point of view, a cause (even if only fictional) or a personality may well benefit. A brand that gets it wrong may suffer the indignity of product mis-placement.
The second question is how do we evaluate it? This one is tricky because the returns are unlikely to be short term or immediately obvious. Product placement is not as intrusive as advertising; the advertiser is not granted sole use of the screen for the ad slot they’ve purchased. Product placement sits on screen within another set of messages that are being received in different ways by viewers. This carries a potential risk of intrusion which needs to be measured and managed as carefully as any awareness or sales upside.
In the US where product placement has been around for some time, there are media tracking companies who use image recognition software to measure how long a product has appeared for. They then attach audience size and cost data to provide a value for the reach and length of exposure obtained for the brand. It seems that in the main product placement evaluation is limited to calculating the media value of brand exposure and to measuring recall and awareness.
One interesting metric could be changes in online brand searches as a result of product placement views or mentions. I know from working with advertisers that just one mention of a product in a property makeover programme for example can drive a significant spike in online brand search activity and e-commerce sales. It may be that the granularity of search data may allow it to emerge as a useful currency for measuring the short and medium term effectieveness of product placement.
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Trevor Beattie brings PR into BMB
Trevor Beattie’s BMB agency has announced the launch of an in-house PR function and in the process one of the founders, Andrew McGuinness broadened his definition of what BMB does from advertising to ‘publicity’. As moves by one of the UK’s strongest creative agencies, these developments are worthy of reflection. I see two points of interest:
First, BMB’s move into PR could indicate the arrival a new agency philosophy. The Internet has created a new mechanism for consumers to better inform their purchasing decisions. Opinion on any product or service is now just a click away. There’s been a democratisation of product information. Communities of consumers can exchange notes on any brand. Non-users can easily access these online opinions to inform their own decision making. The formation of brand attitudes is no longer closed and personal, it’s open and communal. As a result, almost anything that costs more than about £20 is now habitually researched on the Internet before being bought. It follows that any agency in the business of helping companies sell products or services needs to understand and respond to this information rich buying model. By putting PR at the heart of their ‘publicity’ offering, BMB are recognising that brand information can be as important as brand imagery.
Second, ‘publicity’ is a great definition of marketing communications. After the 90’s shopping sprees to buy direct marketing, research and experiential agencies new terms for our industry were emerging left, right and centre. The buzz words became ‘360 degree integration’, ‘total communications’ and ‘media neutrality’. Saatchi and Saatchi’s Charlotte Street entrance signage tracked these changes nicely; the agency used to be called “Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising” proudly announcing that it was in the business of making ads and nothing else. Then I noticed the sign over 80 Charlotte Street was reading “Saatchi and Saatchi Communications” as the agency aimed to get into a wider basket of additional marketing services. Now, perhaps on the basis that less is more, the sign reads simply “Saatchi and Saatchi”, with the agency preferring to define itself by nothing more than its name.
At the end of the day we are trying to make something more famous and better thought of than it was yesterday. But we don’t seem to like simple definitions. For me, the word ‘publicity’ is unashamedly simple and so very strong. It’s also the term used by two of the greatest brand managers the world has ever seen; Brian Epstein and Andrew Loog Oldham.