Brand placements and memory

Empirical research on memory and brand placement has focused on viewers’ memory for the brands placed within a film or television show. This research, to date, indicates a complex relationship between brand placement and memory for the brand. To date no single theory or model has been able to explain this complicated relationship.

28 Early research on the effect of brand placement on brand memory was rather mixed. Ong and Meri (1994) found no improvement in memory for some brand placements and remarkably sizeable improvements in memory for other brand placements. In particular, 77% of viewers recalled seeing Coca Cola while watching the film Falling

Down (Schumacher, 1993), but only 18% recalled seeing Hamm’s Beer in the same

film.

One of the criticisms of the use of memory measures to study brand placement effectiveness, is that most of the studies utilised explicit measures such as recall and recognition. Explicit memory occurs when individuals consciously and intentionally try to recollect a specific previous event. Implicit memory involves unconscious recollection of a specific event. Brand placement effects may occur through both conscious and unconscious processing. Implicit memory is not driven by whether the information is semantically processed, unlike explicit memory; it can be argued implicit memory tests may reveal advertising effects that are related to incidental brand exposure (Yang and Roskos‐Ewoldsen, 2007). Law and Braun (2000) used an implicit memory test to measure the effectiveness of brand placements on television. In their study, the participants were asked to imagine they were helping a friend buy items for a new apartment. The treatment group completed this activity after watching an episode of Seinfeld (Seinfeld, 1991) and the control group did not watch the episode. The treatment group chose more items that had appeared in the Seinfeld (Seinfeld, 1991) episode than the control group. This indicates that implicit memory provides a more perceptive test of brand placements than explicit memory. These results also suggest that brand placements prime the brand in the subconscious memory and thus may influence later judgements or behaviour related to a brand. This is further supported by Yang’s (2004) research, which concluded brand placements in 15 different films increased participants’ implicit memory.

However, this is countered by earlier research on the effectiveness of brand evaluations. This research suggests that brand placements have little or no effect on the evaluation of the brand or on purchase intentions (Babin and Carder, 1996; Karrh, 1998; Ong & Meri, 1994). This can be explained by the fact that if people

29 already have strong attitudes toward the brand, there is the implication they have a consolidated attitude stored in memory and thus their attitude is unlikely to change (Roskos-Ewoldsen and Fazio, 1997). In this case, the brand’s placement may serve to reinforce an already existing attitude, but it is not going to result in a more positive evaluation of the brand or stronger intentions to purchase it. However, this does not explain how attitudes are formed for new brands.

2.10 Summary

The early focus on brand placement research was in film and television and tended to concentrate on cognitive measurement in terms of recall and recognition with mixed results.

In film and television, placement prominence has consistently been found to influence memory performance, with prominent brands resulting in better recall than subtle brand placements. A high degree of plot connection, in which the brand becomes related to the context of the story, generally results in more positive brand evaluations, especially when the brand is placed in a film that the viewers like. The more synergy between the brand and plot connection, the greater the recognition of a brand. Strongly plot connected brands facilitate the narrative structure of films and television.

A significant weakness of this type of research is that an emphasis on recall and recognition cannot fully explain the quality of consumer engagement with brand placement and so can only offer limited insights into its effectiveness. In the context of brand placements, very few studies actually test for the link between brand memory and attitude. Research by Law and Braun (2000) and Russell (2002) suggests that memory for placements may be independent of the evaluations of the brands that are placed. However, to date this this has not been extensively empirically tested.

This suggests brand recall in itself has only limited value to the brand owner and herein lies the problem with much of the early research into brand placement. The fact previous research has largely examined cognitive responses highlights a gap

30 in the academic literature and thus suggests affective and conative responses should be explored, as this will provide more meaningful insights into consumer behaviour and have implications for marketers in terms of strategic branding communications.

Past research has indicated that recall measures may poorly predict persuasion and evaluation; a brand that is remembered is not necessarily a liked one. Conversely, Cowley and Barron (2008) and Law and Braun (2000) argue that brand placements may improve brand attitude without necessarily improving explicit memory. MEE and classical conditioning would explain the positive attitude shift for subtle, visual, weak plot connected brand placements in research Russell (2002), but this assumption has yet to be tested in videogames. This study intends to address this research gap by investigating whether exposure to brand placement affects unknown brand likeability as a result of mere exposure for game players and game watchers in videogames.

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CHAPTER 3