Brand Integration

Introduction

Integrated brand promotion is the use of various promotional tools like event sponsorship, the Internet, public relations, and personal selling, along with advertising, in a coordinated manner to build and maintain brand awareness, identity, and preference. When marketers use advertising in conjunction with other promotional tools, they create an integrated brand promotion that highlights brand features and value. Over the past 30 years, the advertising and promotion industry has evolved to recognize that integration and coordination of promotional elements is key to effective communication and lasting brand identity. Director Morgan Spurlock examines the increased proliferation of branding in every aspect of our lives while attempting to persuade big-name brands to sponsor his irreverent exposé. Companies love to push their products, and it seems like everywhere we go, someone is trying to sell us something. But have you ever wondered what goes on behind closed doors at some of the biggest advertising agencies in the world?

In this eye-opening documentary, viewers follow Spurlock as he convinces a variety of high-profile sponsors to let him pitch their products as “The Greatest,” while still maintaining complete control over his creative vision — an arrangement that’s become increasingly rare in the high-stakes entertainment industry he Brilliant thing Morgan Spurlack does with his movie, “The greatest movie ever sold” is he throws in your face, what advertisers and movie executives have hidden, (in some case very poorly) in the movies they produce. The Transformers all being GMC for example. Spurlack satirizes the whole idea of advertisements and sells out his own film in the process, though he sells out only to buy in, so he doesn’t really sell out. Its this ingenious and hilarious concept to the movie which makes you think “holy cow I’m an idiot” and Morgan pushes his film to show the manipulative ways of commercial giants. Another clever trick Morgan uses is the, documentary within a documentary style.

The film follows Morgan as he attempts to get advertising for his film which is going to be a documentary on advertising. So essential what we see is the pre-production of a movie which then becomes the movie. This gives a real insight in to how the big Hollywood blockbusters are able to get such high budgets by selling to advertisers. Seven years later, Spurlock is aghast to find marketing everywhere, even on the silver screen. So the grand idea behind POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is that Spurlock will produce a documentary about product placement in films (and society beyond) that features his efforts to solicit corporate sponsors willing to pay to place their products throughout his “docbuster.” Variables that Impact the effectiveness of Product Placement

* Visual/Audio/Combined Audio-Visual
* Primary Product Placement Strategies
* Brand/Sponsor Image
* Sponsor-Program Congruity
* Degree of Clutter around the Product Placement
* Audience Characteristics
* Degree of Viewers’ Attachment with the Characters

In general, attitudes toward product placement are favorable across media types. Additionally, viewers tend to like product placements as long as they add realism to the scene. It has been found that viewer enjoyment of product placements actually increased for media vehicle versions of product placements where products were an integral part of the script. He conjectures that peoples’ lives are so saturated with brands that the inclusion of identifiable products adds to the sense of reality, that is, validates the individual’s reality. Also, product placements are preferred to fictitious brands and are understood to be necessary for cost containment in the making of programs and movies.

About half of respondents said that they would be more likely to buy featured products. People with more fashionable and extroverted lifestyles typically have more positive attitudes toward product placement. It was found that college students’ attitudes toward brand placement are positive overall across media, but that brand placements in songs and video games are less acceptable than within films and television programs. So, marketers need to take into account the appropriateness of the specific genre of the particular media program into which they intend to place brands.

Non-students are more neutral toward the practice than students. In general, consumers are positively disposed toward product placement, value the realism of the ad, and do not consider the ad to be unethical or misleading as long as the product is not ethically charged, for example, alcohol. Also, while there is a generally positive perception of the practice overall, there are reservations regarding the insertion of certain ethically charged products such as firearms, tobacco, and alcohol. Also, if brand image is positive, then consumers’ brand evaluations toward the product placement seem to be more positive.