Product placement: Una revisión teórico-práctica de sus capacidades y limitaciones

Product placement (the advertising technique of showing brands within movies, TV series, and other media) has expanded enormously in recent decades and is expected to continue to grow in the future. This article reviews the narrative transportation model, a very appropriate theoretical framework for understanding why films and television are able to change public's beliefs, intentions, and behaviors and, more specifically, why product placement is able to make the public recall placed brands, change attitudes towards them, and even end up consuming them. This article also describes how film/television producers, advertising/media agencies, and advertisers organize themselves to manage brand placements within movies and TV series. Moreover, we analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that product placement presents nowadays, especially in comparison with conventional advertising. An overall assessment of these different aspects leads to conclude that product placement is a technique with better expectations than conventional advertising, particularly for those companies that lack the resources usually available to large multinationals but that aspire to compete in international markets.