To sell a product people need to know about it, it needs to remain in their thoughts well after the advertisement’s end. Picture yourself running a business, you make a product you know will sell well if it draws enough attention, so how do you then turn your product into a spectacle? For Beats headphones by Dr. Dre, the answer was to fill every product placement slot imaginable. Years went by where it was hard to go a few days at a time without catching some product placement from Beats. Music videos would come on and conveniently the musicians would be wearing Beats. Later on, maybe you’d turn on a movie or show, and there are Beats again, or perhaps you’re just catching a post-game press conference for a sporting event you watched and your team’s star athlete just happens to be wearing Beats. The ad campaign was wildly successful turning Beats into a household name and leading to them becoming the most popular headphone brand in the world. Beats took one type of approach. They threw out as many product placements as they could and just hoped something would stick.
However, product placement is tricky it’s becoming increasingly easy to seem disingenuous. One example of this is a mobile game app called Raid Shadow Legends. The game has become infamous because if you click on a YouTube video, even if it is in a wildly unrelated field, there is a very solid chance the video includes a paid sponsorship from the game. The approach they take is to make YouTubers seem like they enjoy and actively play the game, however, this is where it seems disingenuous. It is painfully obvious that many of these YouTubers don’t play the game. This is where the difference in perception from Beats arises. Beats sold themselves as a luxury, one that was conceivable that athletes, characters, and musicians alike would wear. This isn’t to say the game is a financial flop, quite the contrary it has been wildly popular, that’s why they’ve begun this ad campaign, to continue their success. Nevertheless, throwing all their eggs into the basket of product placement hasn’t quite worked too well for their brand’s image, contrary to that of Beats.
Furthermore, it’s not uncommon to see episodes of popular TV shows or even viral videos dedicated to a product. In what can at times seem like an overwhelming display of product placement and at other times can seem so brilliantly and sneakily executed it’s hard to find the line. Much like with product placement you have to understand your base, and the platform being used to sell to said base. Do the shows and videos mesh with your base, and do they seem genuine? These are important questions to consider, and as a consumer, it’s easy to distinguish the good from the bad. There’s been an evolution in product placement I’ve already mentioned two examples the most prevalent being placement in YouTube videos, a clear appeal to the youth. The other being in dedicated episodes of TV shows or videos, an approach that seems to be more for large corporations willing to stretch their advertisement budget to the max. These complex evolutions are all for naught though if one doesn’t understand their base, in a world so digitally connected it’s easy to seem out of touch. Recently, we saw Peloton struggle with being out of touch in a Christmas ad that has been criticized for being sexist. Whether you interpret it that way is up to you, however, one thing not up for debate is the impact it had on the company. Their stocks plummeted. An ad designed to boost sales and growth for shareholders created the very opposite. That’s the power of persuasion and that is the importance of knowing who you’re selling to.
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