A fascinating aspect of product placement is the effectiveness and measurement criteria. It is often discussed in academic journals, and is an area of PPL where companies and agencies differ significantly in their attitudes. Therefore it was important for the authors to determine the
attitudes of the agencies who work with the tool every day, and compare it to the views of the brand holders and experts whose views might differ.
7.4.1 Measuring the effects of product placement
At first, it was important to investigate how, or if, it is possible to measure the effects of product placement. From interviews and theoretical research it was clear that the effects of product placement and its effectiveness are hard to measure, and this might be a significant factor in deciding whether to utilize the marketing tool or not.
As expected, there are differences in opinions on the matter. The agency Propaganda GEM has a system that quantifies the results of a campaign and thereafter calculates an exposure price that is equivalent to what a brand holder would have to pay if using another marketing tool.
The measurement system is called PREVA, and is developed by Propaganda GEM. The system quantifies the product placement through a series of criteria.
At first, the gross audience is determined and then multiplied with the recall rate. The gross audience is calculated on behalf of the world’s top 50 markets where the given film/TV show is aired. It is estimated over a 3 year period, and based on Box Office ticket sales numbers, video rentals, TV ratings, and ancillary impressions generated from hotels, online, piracy and in flights (Prevamedia.com, 2009). The recall rate is then investigated through panels and polls by
Propaganda, in order to determine the amount of useful contacts.
Figure 17: PREVA product placement measurement system, developed by Propaganda GEM, (Prevamedia.com, 2009).
The useful contacts are then multiplied by the VPM, the value per thousand contacts, which is a number chosen by Propaganda GEM in accordance with standard marketing measurement techniques. The authors were not able to be informed about the actual number.
An example of a client that Propaganda has done a product placement for is an Audi car in the movie Iron Man. There was a gross audience projection of 1,477,000,000 people over three years from box office sales etc. The recall rate of the Audi placement is 54.6 % because it is clearly identifiable, has a long product exposure, is associated with the main character, has a readable logo, and plays a key role in the story line. When multiplying these numbers in accordance to the equation in figure 17 one gets 773,253,000 useful contacts, with an effective media value of USD 14,846,000 (PREVA presentation, Appendix B). Interestingly many of the factors determining the recall rate of a placement are also issues that are mentioned by Andersen (2006) on
prominence of a placement in a given media as seen in section 4.6.1.1.
One can definitely see that it is somewhat possible to quantify the measurements of a product placement. However, looking critically at the numbers involved, the problem that a company can have with such estimates is the “real” useful contacts. By this is meant, that even though the recall rate is 54.6 %, it doesn’t mean that there are that many useful contacts. Especially in the Audi case, because most people of the audience of such a movie may not have enough resources to purchase such a high end luxury item. One might argue that from a brand awareness
perspective, it makes sense since many will connect the Audi brand to the movie Iron Man, but again it might not be enough to lead to increased sales. Other concerns are that the utilized recall
rate is probably not always viable. Furthermore, the authors don’t know the polls and surveys that are used, or the respondents background.
The argument is that product placement don’t necessarily lead to increased sales, because the audiences reached are not always within the company’s customer segment. It is, for instance, more reliable to say that an Audi advertisement in an exclusive lifestyle magazine may reach Audi’s customer segment better. However, the advantage here for product placement is that it has a broader reach, and may reach future customers, and create a larger hype for their products (Camilla Olsen, Tuborg, 2009)
Although PREVA is used by Propaganda GEM, it is not used, or perhaps even accepted by all the companies that use product placement. Camilla Olsen from Tuborg explains that she doubts that the numbers are that accurate, and that Tuborg on top of the supplied numbers from Propaganda GEM also use unsophisticated measurement systems such as Google searches, reading online chat boards, blogs, etc. The same is done by B&O. They are in close contact with key customers, business partners, and others to determine how noticeable the placement is to their customers and not just the general public.
Hans Theisen from Media Works has done measurements on PPLs in music videos, where he interviewed viewers to determine if they could recognize the brands integrated in the video, whether it moved the perception that the viewer had of the brand, and whether they would consider purchasing such a product. His experience is that, the biggest issue is that viewers have a difficult time identifying what brands are actually integrated. He mentions, that in a music video by Johnny Deluxe, a Nokia mobile phone was placed in the video. He experienced that many viewers lacked knowledge about the brand, which resulted in many of the interviewed viewers actually increasing their liking of the phone, thinking it was a Sony Ericsson.
Although it seems as if the measurement tools available are not fully developed, it is clear from our questionnaire that there are differences between the agencies and brand holders.
Figure 18: Results based on how interviewees rate the ability to measure the effects of PPLs.
Figure 18 above shows that 80% of the agencies believe that the measurement tools available are reliable and provide good (4) or very good (5) results. From a brand holder perspective, there is consensus that the measurement tools available are neither good nor bad. This confirms the measurement issues brand holders have, and the fact that the brand holders differ significantly from the agencies. It is clear that this is an issue that needs more attention, if product placement is to succeed among Danish international companies.
7.4.2 Summing up on measuring the product placement effects
A number of aspects from the measuring part of the interview were noticeable, especially since the results surprised the authors in different area:
Measurement tools do exist, such as PREVA, but they are not fully developed to accommodate brand holder needs.
This is confirmed in the questionnaire in which companies scored the measurement as neither good or bad (3) compared to an agency average of 3,8 being close to good.
PREVA lacks the aspect of recognition