Product Placement Popularity to Grow in 2012, says Leading Marketing Expert

Jan 03

Seethu Seetharaman, professor of marketing at Washington University, has predicted that the use of product placement and viral marketing will grow in 2012, as traditional advertising initiatives such as print advertising and TV commercials continue to decline.

Seetharaman says that emerging concepts like product placement, viral internet campaigns, crowd sourcing and guerilla promotions will dominate in 2012 and beyond, saying: “Traditional expensive advertising is no longer effective given all the clutter, as well as the emergence of technologies, like digital video recorders, that block the ads from even being viewed, much less absorbed, by consumers”.

Transformers 3: A Product Placement Record, even by Hollywood Standards

On product placement in movies, Seetharaman said: “The movie Transformers 3 created a record, even by Hollywood standards, in terms of the number of brands that were ‘product placed’ within the movie. This will catch on in the future, although the concept of product placements goes back to the times of the Marx Brothers.”

The reason for the reemergence of product placement, says Seetharaman, is down to the lack of opportunity nowadays to reach a captive audience. With product placement, consumers have no choice but to take in the brand being advertised – they can’t simply switch over or fast forward. “In fact, product placements are also on the rise in sitcoms, video games, and other media for the same reason,” he says.

Here’s a round-up of the top 100 products placed in Transformers 3: