In many cases branded goods or services face some difficulties in reaching their consumers with traditional advertising, so they prefer product placement strategy for presenting their product. These groups of producers bring on some problems for advertising. Getting messages across to target audiences through television has become more difficult due to several factors: active viewer avoidance of TV ads by zipping and zapping (Olney et al, 1991, as referred to in Gupta et al, 2000), passive viewer avoidance of TV ads, fragmentation of TV audiences and television clutter (Lawrence 1989, as referred to in Gupta et al, 2000).
It seems that consumer today prefer to accept brand images into areas of public life that are “commercial free “and to see brands and their identifiers as a natural part of everyday life. There are number of criticism to this strategy of marketing. For example some product placements which have ethical problems such as cigarette and alcohol have drawn especially strong criticism from consumer. When the hero of a movie smoke a branded cigarette during the movie, the audience will be influenced unconsciously and encouraged to try that. This issue has bad effects especially on new generation and kids.
Besides all criticism which exists against product placement, the benefits of this strategy cannot be ignored. For instance movie makers use brand name products to increase the realism by lending a natural “everyday” touch to its setting. It would be meaningless, for example, to show movie characters entering restaurants, stores or gas stations with no names on them. Unlike traditional advertising messages, product placement provides a way where products can be shown realistically in the context of a movie scene, so the consumers will be encouraged to try them more. All of these issues related to product placement and branded goods and their influences are depended to their content and also where and when and how we present them.
Here is a good example of product placemnet in "TRANSFORMER" movie:
