Recent report from research company PQ Media showed that spending for branded entertainment in the USA in 2009 fell by 1.3 percent from 2008. However, spending for branded entertainment declined less than spending for other types of advertising and marketing. Yet, the money spent on product placement in recorded music grew 8 percent in 2009 compared with the year before.
I’ve covered product placement in music videos in previous posts (the latest: Kylie and BMW), but here’s another case. The British/Irish girl group The Saturdays released a video for their next single Missing You. The video includes very visible product placement for Ice-watches. Product placement in the video is collaboration between Ice-watches, the record label and London based branded entertainment agency Seesaw Media.
For The Saturdays this is not the first foray into branded entertainment. They have previously teamed up with the clothing brand Rare to launch a new collection for women available to buy in House of Fraser. Their relationship with Rare started with Mollie's (one of the members) yellow dress in the “If This Is Love” video and was upgraded when the girls designed their own line.
Ice-watches collaboration with The Saturdays also wasn’t the first product placement for the company. Their watch was included in David Guetta’s video One Love. There are additional photos of product placement from The Saturdays’ and Guetta’s videos on my Flickr page.
Product placement-generated money is often used to offset the music video’s cost, but generally it’s used for promotion of some brand. Ten years ago the videos were done to display creativity, but today they represent another way to generate revenue.
Simon Ritterband, director of Seesaw Media, who was included in the aforementioned Ice-watches product placement, has revealed exclusively for Brands & Films his thoughts on product placement in music industry. He believes that brands will continue to feature within music videos over the coming years, but will grow into more than just ‘product placement’, e.g. tour sponsorship or collaboration with artists on brand creative ideas.
Mr. Ritterband shared also his views on the future of product placement in the UK and Europe. In his opinion we can expect a dramatic rise in the rate at which brands start to enter the entertainment marketing arena, because it is essential that brands find new ways to get in front of their audiences and entertainment marketing offers a great solution to this.
But how can we achieve the desired effects?
“The activity has to be engaging and exciting for the audience but on the other hand not be heavy handed in its execution. There is no surer way to turn off a potential customer than to overload the brand product within the content. There first of all has to be the right synergy between brand and production, avoid trying to force in a brand to make it work. We must also remember that inserting a brand into any form of content is only the beginning of the process,” said Mr. Ritterband.
So, let's see what the future will bring.
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