In the modern advertising age, there are numerous ways for a company to appear in any advertising media. One of the most sought-after services is placing a brand in audio-visual content. This is defined as product placement, where the product appears straight within the shot of the movie or episode. It is a high-cost action but often productive for businesses due to the high generated income from the audiences. One example of product placement in movies is the Apple MacBook Laptop usage scene in Marry Me, a recent film released in 2022. Although the given product placement was in early 2022, it can be considered a successful advertising illustration per the initial assessment.
The growth in advertising expenses and the decline in the number of people watching advertisements contribute to the rise of product endorsements and brand integration. Due to growing prices and declining viewership, businesses are shifting away from investing a more significant portion of their marketing budgets in digital technology. This is considered one of the powerful advantages as it also helps companies increase their profits.
Since the film is a romantic comedy-drama with Jennifer Lopez as the central character, the target audience could be a wide range, including women and men between the ages of 18 and 50. A strategic intent for this placement is to advertise MacBook and attract the audience to buy it, showing its high user-friendliness. According to research, product placements in TV programs and video games have influenced consumer attitudes and memory (Rosokhata et al., 2020). The main benefit of this placement for the Apple brand is that it helps attract many clients to company products, increasing their revenue.
A positive feature of films and series is that they combine fantasy and reality, giving the viewer the impression that even an ordinary person can live the same way as the characters in the film (Mohd Nordin et al., 2018). Thus, associating themselves with the film’s main characters, the audience subconsciously tries to obtain the same things and products as them. Subtle and realistic product placements within the story’s overall setting can help to augment the experience (Guo et al., 2019). In the context of Apple product placement in Marry Me, people may believe they can also have a MacBook or other products for everyday use. They tend to buy one after watching scenes where characters sit with the same laptop.
In addition to the apparent benefits, product placement in this film can also be disadvantageous for the brand unless it is in line with the target audience. Movies and television shows have a broad audience of billions of people (Pavlič et al., 2021). That means product placement advertising will not be cheap. It is almost always a seven-figure investment for a minor placement and a ten-figure investment or more for the brand’s involvement in the film’s story (López García et al., 2019). Furthermore, the intended audience might also be the representatives of the modern middle class. The reason is that, according to the study, essential components of a middle-class lifestyle are: owning a home and costly possessions like MacBook or iPad, providing university education for their children, health security, a vehicle for every adult, and making family trips at least once a year (Hofman-Kohlmeyer, 2020). This is primarily a definition of consumption, with middle-class ambitions defined by bourgeois spending (Vashisht et al., 2019). Since the MacBook is usually costly and unaffordable spending for people from low-income families, companies should consider the primary target audience of a particular media space or show. Otherwise, it may lead to illiquid and unprofitable advertising of the product.
Overall, in an age where numerous advertisement sources have become available, product placement in movies embodies one of the successful approaches to brand promotion. This has been illustrated in the context of MacBook placement in the recent movie Marry Me (Universal Pictures, 2022). Although it is not the right time to give it a positive or negative assessment, the overall impression implies that the given placement can yield an increase in buyers of MacBook, especially from the middle class.
Reference List
Guo, F., Ye, G., Hudders, L., Lv, W., Li, M. and Duffy, V. (2019) ‘Product Placement in Mass Media: A Review and Bibliometric Analysis’, Journal of Advertising, 48(2), pp.215-231.
Hofman-Kohlmeyer, M. (2020) ‘Impact of product placement strategies on brand reception – literature review’, Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Humanitas Zarządzanie, 21(3), pp.69-86.
López García, J.J., Lizcano, D., Ramos, C.M. and Matos, N. (2019) ‘Digital Marketing Actions That Achieve a Better Attraction and Loyalty of Users: An Analytical Study’, Future Internet, 11(6), p.130.
Mohd Nordin, M.A.S. and Baharom, S.N. (2018) ‘A Study on Awareness of Product Placement in Malaysian Movies’, Idealogy Journal, 3(2), pp.103–108.
Pavlič, J., Tomažič, T. and Kožuh, I. (2021) ‘The impact of emerging technology influences product placement effectiveness: a scoping study from interactive marketing perspective’, Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, ahead-of-print.
Rosokhata, A., Rybina, O., Derykolenko, A. and Makerska, V. (2020) ‘Improving the Classification of Digital Marketing Tools for the Industrial Goods Promotion in the Globalization Context’, Research in World Economy, 11(4), p.42.
Vashisht, D., Royne, M.B. and S., S. (2019) ‘What we know and need to know about the gamification of advertising’, European Journal of Marketing, 53(4), pp.607–634.
Universal Pictures (2022) Marry Me – Official Trailer [HD]. Web.