If you have to deal with marketing and advertising, you may have heard the term product placement at some point.
There are possibilities that you may not know the exact meaning and importance of this phrase.
Like all other marketing methods, product placement is gaining too much popularity and becoming an important way for companies and brands to advertise their products and reach their targeted audiences.
The best thing that is contributing to its huge importance is that you can boost your sales, build a good brand reputation, increase brand awareness, and attract a huge number of customers without taking the help of traditional advertisements.
What does Product Placement Mean?
As its name implies, product placement is a type of advertising which mainly focuses on products, goods, and services. In this type of advertising, branded products and services are featured or incorporated in a production that targets a wide range of audiences from different locations and aspects.
Product placemats are quite effective and considered an efficient way of advertising because they allow the manufacturers to integrate their products into a movie, song, or show and it directly or indirectly reaches millions of people. The product is marketed without any realization.
The big fat example of product placement advertising is James Bond movies in which he drove Ford and marketed the car. People started to consider Ford cars as a great product to look attractive and stylish like him.
Some of the modern and advanced product placement trends include selling or integrating a storyline. We can also see that post-production technology is also being used to relocate or alter the product placement for advertising purposes.
Is Product Placement Effective for Businesses?
Product Placement increases sales to many folds, develops brand awareness, and builds the company’s goodwill.
Large firms and big companies spend a large amount of their advertisements budget on product placement in movies and shows.
The small business may not have that big budget to advertise their products through movies but they can get help from social media and local retailers that offer free product placement opportunities to some extent.
Through product placement, you can take your products to the consideration of your targeted audiences within a short span of time. Using product placement as your advertisements, you will not only reach a small region or a specific location but your product will be advertised globally.
People usually love to use products that are used by their favorite stars in the movies, this fact gives a push to the popularity of your goods and brand in an unexpected manner.
One best thing about product placement is that your advertisement will not stop after a specific time but your product will be advertised every time your movie is watched or premiered.
You should give product placement a try and you will definitely see visible results efficiently and immediately.
How Much does it Cost for Product Placement?
When it comes to advertising, usually people think of traditional television ads but the fact is that such types of advertising require hundreds of thousands of dollars because it includes the costs of actors, filming, production, shooting, etc. Do keep this fact in mind that all these costs are just the tip of the iceberg, broadcasting your commercial on a well-known and well-reputed channel can cost you millions.
An alternative to this, product placement requires only a fraction of this cost because you will not have to spend on all these extras such as filming, broadcasting, and all. Your product will only be used by the actors in the movie at some point and it really doesn’t require much effort. For example, if an actor is going to use a perfume, it will not cost any extra money to use your brand perfume instead.
For a better understanding of the cost for product placement, below is the detailed information that will give you an idea about different aspects that are combined to make up a total cost.
- Retainer Cost
- Product Cost
- Sponsorships
Retainer Cost:
The major and primary cost of the product placement especially for the small sectors or businesses is the retainer fees. This is the cost of the advertising which is paid to the retainer agencies that work forward for your project.
You may think that you should contact the production company directly so that you can save this cost but experts say that getting services from a retainer or agency is necessary because it can give you major benefits in the long run.
You have the option to stick to a single agency for all your product placements and advertising but you can also contact different agencies so that you can find various opportunities as more agencies will have more contact with the production companies.
Product Cost:
You may have to deliver your product to a place where the film is to be shot or a place far from your company headquarters, these expenses will be bear by you. Do keep this fact in mind that production will never pay for the product that is going to be placed in the movie and you will have to send them that product without any price.
If you want to promote your product to a great extent, you can offer your products to the production team so that they can use them during their promotions as well. One thing to note here is that all these products will go to production free of cost and there are possibilities that they do not return your products even after the shooting is completed especially if your products are related to electronics, toys, or daily use goods.
Sponsorship:
Most of the time the product placement transactions and payments are mainly done on a Quid Pro Quo basis. It means that production companies will not ask you to pay cash or something like this for product placement in their movies or show instead they may ask you for advertisement buyouts or sponsorship. In some cases, these types of transactions can bring you some type of benefits as well.