] Super visit to Cecilia Cheung, so as to point out whether it can replace hard advertising, and then point out its development trend.
Product placement, hard advertising
In recent years, product placement has become the focus of media professionals and scholars. There are different opinions about the commercial prospect and development trend of product placement in academic circles. The author generally believes that product placement can supplement hard advertising, but it cannot replace hard advertising after all.
Types of Product Placement Advertising
Product placement is a complex concept, and there is no exact definition at present. We can understand it properly through different classification methods.
According to different media, product placement can be divided into movie placement, TV placement, program placement, brand cinema placement and game placement. This classification method is easy to understand and need not be repeated.
According to the different payment conditions, product placement can be divided into free product placement, barter product placement and paid product placement. Free products, such as complimentary short films, are exchanged, for example, companies promise to help promote programs or movies. Paying is giving money or using dividends as advertising fees.
The common methods of product placement are as follows:
1. Embedded scene class: that is, in the scene revealed by the picture and containing the activities of characters, the physical objects that can display the product or brand information are arranged, such as the "M-Zone" billboard in the train compartment in the movie world without thieves, the advertising banner of Beijing Morning Post, the relocation sign of China, etc.
2. Embedded lines: emphasize the advantages of products or brands in the lines. "For example, this film was made in 196 1
3. Embedding props: that is, the product directly appears on the screen as a prop or appliance of the character, and can be watched online through super access. With the help of the extraordinary skills of the characters, the full aesthetic feeling and excellent performance of the products are displayed. For example, James Bond's BMW in the movie "007" is a typical prop placement advertisement. In China, people are familiar with the advertisements of props implanted in CCTV Spring Festival Evening.
4. Embedded sound effect: that is, through the hints of melody and lyrics, the audience is guided to associate with a specific brand. For example, in the movie "Mobile Phone", Motorola's cell phone rings no less than ten times. There is a plot in "Chasing January SMS", in which the characters learn to dance with Jay Chou's song MV on TV, and this song "My Place" is "China Moving" in 2004.
Brands suitable for product placement
1, suitable for brand promotion but not for promotional products.
It is difficult to promote sales by simply showing your face. Most viewers only watch their own product placement advertisements, just like the street view flashed in the bus window. The audience didn't leave any impression. Product placement is obscure, and the audience only regards it as a program element, and does not try to remember, let alone have the impulse and desire to try.
Only when it is perfectly combined with the plot of the movie and becomes an inseparable part of the whole movie, can it play a propaganda role, such as the cleansing spray in My Greek Wedding and the candy that attracts aliens in E.T., but this opportunity is rare for most products.
2, suitable for mature brands and not suitable for new brands.
Product placement should be used to strengthen consumers' understanding of the brand and increase consumers' awareness of the brand after a brand has gained a certain popularity. Therefore, the use of film and television product placement will only play an obvious role in the market growth or mature products.
However, the new brand does not have a certain popularity. After the fleeting product placement advertisement flashed in the audience's eyes, the audience visited the latest video and forgot it before they knew what it was. Therefore, product placement is suitable for mature brands, but not for new brands.
Media carrier suitable for implanting advertisements
1, movie
As we all know, almost all sensational product placement advertisements are movie product placement advertisements. The earliest documented product placement advertisement should be 195 1 Gordon King's trademark in the movie The Queen of Africa. In the following film industry, there are many product placement advertisements. There are many successful cases, such as candy in E.T. Alien, cleansing spray in My Greek Wedding, general motors in Transformers, Motorola mobile phone in Mobile Phone, golden eye 007, world without thieves, BMW in Crazy Stone and so on, which fully prove that the film is product placement.
2. TV set
Television media is also a great development space for product placement, and has formed a relatively complete system. Simple TV product placement advertisements usually take the form of title, sponsorship and bid, such as "Dahongying Cinema" and "Yilijia Movie Appointment". Relatively complicated is integrated product placement. The cooperation between "Super Girl" and Mengniu Yogurt is a classic representative. More advanced TV product placement requires that they can be combined with TV programs. For example, the Bailong mineral spring pot in the story of the editorial department is well integrated with the story, making Bailong mineral spring pot famous overnight. At the same time, due to the weakness of TV hard advertising and the restriction of national laws and regulations, product placement as a main form of TV advertising is playing an increasingly important role.
3. Competition
There are great advantages in embedding advertisements in games. First of all, you must concentrate on playing games. In this environment, advertisements are easy to be remembered by players, and the advertising effect will be better than that of movies and TV. Secondly, the target audience is clear and the accuracy is high. Game players are between 16-35, mainly students and white-collar workers, especially information industry practitioners and managers of enterprises and institutions. This nation has a strong independence. Stable financial resources, like to try new things. Thirdly, the advertising rate is high, and it is not limited by time and space. A successful online game, with tens of thousands of players all the time, has become a 24-hour mass media platform, thus attracting a lot of attention and visits.
Of course, in addition to the above three media carriers, there are also some media that can be used for product placement, such as radio, newspapers, magazines, pop songs and so on. Bulgari, the world's most famous jewelry producer, signed a contract with the famous British writer Fei Wilton to write a novel to promote Bulgari products. After the novel is published, Bulgari will send a copy to each of his top clients. Thank them for their support to Bulgari over the years. Fei Wilton really wrote this novel, and it sold well after publication. However, their advertising effect is very small, and the overall amount is very limited, so it is difficult to attract the attention of advertisers and advertisers. Therefore, the media suitable for implantable advertising is still much less than hard advertising.
Advantages of Product Placement Advertising
1. The TV industry has already entered the "remote control era". Rich channel selection allows viewers to easily skip advertising time and choose to watch their favorite programs. The separation of accompanying advertisements and program content in time and space greatly affects its communication effect. However, embedded advertisements are embedded in the program, so the audience can't predict the arrival of advertisements, let alone skip them.
With the advent of pay TV era, pay channels will create an era without commercial advertisements. Hard advertising has been difficult to maintain its original position in TV media. However, advertisers can't ignore the TV media, which has the widest audience and the most active mode of communication. Therefore, product placement can greatly supplement TV hard advertisements.
3. Decree number. SARFT 17 restricts the broadcast time of TV advertisements, while product placement can gain more advertising time for the media and advertisers, which is beneficial to both media and advertisers.
4. Product placement is different from general hard advertising. It can make the audience unconsciously accept product information, thus greatly reducing the audience's resistance to advertising. Therefore, product placement advertising often has better advertising effect than general advertising.
The cost of hard advertising is very high, and it is soaring. A successful product placement program can get great returns at a small cost. In many cases, advertisers only need to provide products and venues, or promote the release of movies, and enterprises do not need additional expenses; Even if financial support is needed, considering the repeated exposure of the film in front of millions of people around the world after its release, and the extra exposure of making it into a CD and broadcasting it on TV stations, the investment in product placement is quite low compared with traditional advertising.
Disadvantages of product placement
1. The limitation of brands and media we mentioned earlier is a major injury to product placement, but in hard advertising, most brands and most media are easily combined.
2. The effect of product placement is somewhat uncontrollable. The broadcast and replay of programs, TV dramas and movies are beyond the control of media managers in terms of broadcast time, region, media and frequency. The initiative is in the hands of content providers, which determines the content, proportion and output direction of information, while managers are only passive recipients. Although they paid the cost, the return was somewhat unpredictable.
In the movie Fairy Descent released in the summer of 2005, I visited Sun Li and Deng Chao. Nicole Kidman, a witch, turned a tarot card into a signed visa card and started shopping with this card. Wells said: "Even if we make the best scene design in the world, if the film is not well shown in the cinema, it will still be a failure." "Or in big movies, it doesn't.
3. The suitable medium is limited. Generally speaking, product placement can only be placed in movies, TV and games. Compared with traditional hard advertising, the media is relatively limited.
4. It can only strengthen brand awareness, but it is difficult to promote product sales.
5. There is no standard fee. "Everything is based on the affordability of the market," said a producer who once worked in Mark Burnett Film Group. And with the competitive use of product placement, its advertising fee advantage is not great.
6. If not handled properly, product placement will have a negative impact. For example, before the magic "Fantasia Sky" at the Spring Festival party in 2003, a male host performed a small magic trick with a handkerchief, and the result was a bottle of very cola. Then he even said a good word for "very cola", which caused many viewers' dissatisfaction. Many media commented that this was "fooling the audience".
The relationship between product placement and hard advertising
After analyzing the suitable brand, suitable media and its own advantages and disadvantages, it is easy for us to see the position of product placement in the advertising system and understand its relationship with traditional hard advertising.
In order to better explain the relationship between product placement and hard advertising, it is necessary for us to look at the development of various advertising forms from the historical and dynamic process of advertising development. The development of advertising has gone through the process from signboards to newspapers, to radio, to television and to the Internet. Just like whether traditional mass media will be replaced by the Internet and the broadcast time of super access in previous years, in recent years, people are also discussing whether traditional hard advertisements will be replaced by product placement in the near future. We obviously know that newspapers have never replaced signboards, radio has never replaced newspapers, television has never replaced radio, and the Internet has never replaced any traditional media. In this historical process, there have been complex forms of advertising, and no one has replaced anyone.
Based on the same thinking, we can draw a conclusion: product placement will not replace traditional hard advertising, it will still be the main advertising form, and product placement will become a useful supplement to hard advertising together with other advertising forms.
Development trend of product placement advertising
The development of product placement mainly presents the following trends:
1, the total amount is increasing.
Represented by the United States, in the two-year centralized sales of American broadcasting in 2005, the amount of prime-time advertising dropped by $6,543.8+billion, from $9.3 billion in 2004 to $9.2 billion, and advertisers put this 1 billion into product placement.
2. Globalization of development.
With the global development of media industries such as film and television, product placement has penetrated into every corner of the world with strong momentum. In recent years, China and other Asian countries have adopted a large number of product placement advertisements, and even the Spring Festival Evening programs in China in recent two years have infiltrated a large number of product placement advertisements. In Latin American countries, product placement is also in full swing. For example, the Latin American version of "Crazy Housewives" broadcast by Argentina's Artear TV station, six companies advertised in conspicuous and inconspicuous places.
3. Diversification of operators.
With the continuous enrichment of advertising practice and the increasingly mature application of new media and new technologies, product placement is expanding from the traditional film and television field to online games, mobile phones and outdoor media.
One of the most noteworthy is online games. Since 2002, the number of online game users in China has increased by 30%-40% every year. In 2006, the online game market in China has reached 6.54 billion yuan, and the online game market in China has become internationally recognized as the most potential market. Compared with the media such as film and television, the game has a stronger sense of bringing in, and players can directly interact with advertisers.
4. Systematic operation.
Product placement is not limited to simple and isolated advertisements on the same media, but gradually tends to media integration and integrated marketing. Product placement will become more and more an integral part of the whole marketing system. Specifically, advertising should be organically coordinated with public relations, promotion, marketing and other activities, and various forms of advertising should also cooperate with each other. Product placement should not be separated from traditional hard advertising. When using product placement, we should pay attention to the coordination with traditional advertising, public relations communication and terminal stores. Only such a system can achieve good results after planning and operation.