ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 Young Thai and Uk Consumers' Experiences of Television Product Placement- Engagement, Resistance and Objectification Rungpaka Amy Tiwsakul, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK Christopher Hackley, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK This paper reports a cross-cultural interpretive study of young Thai and UK consumers’ experiences of television product placement. It sets this within first-hand practitioner accounts of current practice in each country which show that product placement is a booming industry operating within relatively ill-defined regulatory parameters, resulting in some illicit practices. The consumer data were interpreted through three pre-eminent themes: engagement, resistance and objectification. Within a prevalent mood of acquiescence there was some evidence that Thai consumers exhibit ‘Generation Y’ resistance to incongruent placement practices. This limited resistance occurred within a general mood of acquiescence to, engagement with and reflexive understanding of, product placement practices. [to cite]: Rungpaka Amy Tiwsakul and Christopher Hackley (2006) ,"Young Thai and Uk Consumers' Experiences of Television Product Placement- Engagement, Resistance and Objectification", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 7, eds. Margaret Craig Lees, Teresa Davis, and Gary Gregory, Sydney, Australia : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 372-377. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/12969/volumes/ap07/AP-07 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/. YOUNG THAI AND UK CONSUMERS’ EXPERIENCES OF TELEVISION PRODUCT PLACEMENT- ENGAGEMENT, RESISTANCE AND OBJECTIFICATION Rungpaka Amy Tiwsakul , School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London Chris Hackley, School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London ABSTRACT In the UK, the Ofcom22 regulatory framework also forbids This paper reports an interpretive study of young paid-for product placement on commercial TV channels. consumers’ subjective experience of television product The UK product placement industry operates ostensibly as placement in Thailand and the UK. The discussion of a free prop service for cash-strapped production studios findings is structured by three pre-eminent themes induced that want to enhance the dramatic realism of their shows from the data, labeled “engagement,” “resistance,” and with branded props. Agencies take substantial fees from “objectification.” The paper elaborates on these themes clients to ensure that it is the clients’ brands which appear. drawing on supporting data extracts and sets its analysis No financial consideration is supposed to be involved, but within an overall review of TV product placement research the Sunday Times showed that this rule is regularly and practice in the respective countries. In conclusion, transgressed with payments in cash or kind changing hands there was some evidence that young Thai consumers in exchange for coveted exposure in popular TV shows. exhibit “Generation Y” resistance to incongruent placement Some four months before the scandal of product practices, but that this limited resistance occurred within a placements at the BBC broke, a practitioner in a top Thai general climate of acquiescence to, engagement with, and advertising and media agency casually mentioned during a reflexive understanding of, product placement practices. depth interview for this research study that “...despite what they say, commercial TV in the UK has product INTRODUCTION: TV PRODUCT placement…technically I’ve seen it in the BBC, even PLACEMENT AND “EXPERIENTIAL” though its very subliminal…that’s because I look, I like MARKETING watching product placement.” It appears from this Brand marketing organisations have typically been comment that the pressure on TV studios to place branded content with seeing brand exposure in mediated products is considerable, and may be understood more entertainment as an add-on, but many are now putting thoroughly by the industry than by the UK TV channels, specific resources into the technique. One of its perceived the regulators, or the public. advantages over traditional advertising is the access it Brand clients feel that product placement is a cost- affords to consumers’ daily experience. Unilever, for effective yet powerful way to engage with consumers in an example, recently announced a 20% reduction in its global experiential context. Audiences may be aware that brand TV advertising expenditure and an increased expenditure appearances in entertainment are probably not accidental, on product placement in television shows.19 Proctor and but most viewers do not have detailed knowledge of how Gamble have announced a similar diversion of cable TV placements are negotiated between studios and brands. advertising “spend” to new media to reflect their Product placements or related sponsorship techniques “experiential” marketing approach.20 Through placement in cannot easily be evaded by “zapping” through pre-recorded TV soap operas, situation comedies, quiz shows, dramas, programming slots to avoid the advertising. and other genres, brands can feature as meaningful artifacts In this paper we will firstly outline our interpretation in narrative contexts which have a powerful resonance for of the strategic rationale lying behind the rising expenditure consumers. This resonance is recognised by brand clients, on product placement by the brand marketing industry. We who, according to one Thai TV product placement will then offer a review of published research in the field. practitioner interviewed in the course of this study, are This review will illustrate that, while several robust “increasingly [concerned with] consumer engagement, not findings have emerged, relatively few previous studies just consumer reach but engaging the have adopted an interpretive perspective to explore the consumers…connecting them emotionally…with your nature of the engagement between consumer and brand brands…connection, emotional connection, not just contact within the dramatically heightened experience of a product point but emotion, [a]deeper route.” It is the quality of the placement exposure in a TV entertainment program. In engagement with TV product placement that this study sets addition, previous research has normally focused on movie out to explore with respect to young Thai and UK product placement rather than TV. Finally, there have been consumers. relatively few cross-cultural studies, and none involving Brand clients are extremely keen to get their brands young Thai and UK TV-show consumers. We will then exposed within TV programming. A recent exposé in the describe the data-gathering method used and the theoretical UK Sunday Times21 newspaper revealed the wide extent of frame adopted. After this, we establish a context of the paid-for product placement in the publicly funded, non- material practices of product placement in each country, commercial, BBC television channel. Product placement, drawing on depth interviews with leading practitioners and the insertion of brands into the script, scene, lyric or plot of secondary sources. The findings section offers our mediated entertainment, is against the rules of the BBC, interpretations of the consumer data, and the discussion which forbid it from carrying any advertising whatsoever. following will elaborate on the major themes that emerged. 19 “Consumer Giant Cuts TV Advertising Expenditure by One-Fifth,” The Independent, September 17, 2005. 22 20 Snoddy, Raymond (2005), “The Man with the $6bn The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) Plan,” The Independent, June 27. http://www.asa.org.uk; The Committee of 21 “Watch Closely: How TV Shows Connive in ‘Stealth’ Advertising Practice (CAP) http://www.cap.org.uk; Advertising,” Sunday Times, September 18, 2005, The Office of Communications (Ofcom) 10–1. http://www.ofcom.org.uk. 372 PRODUCT PLACEMENT RESEARCH persuasive communication, studies of rhetoric show that STUDIES implicit communication forms such as product placement Product placement is seen as a “hybrid” marketing can also be resonant. In spoken rhetoric, what is left unsaid communications technique that combines elements of but implied can be more powerfully suggestive than what is sponsorship, celebrity endorsement, and publicity made explicit (Billig 1987, 1991). This principle has been (Balasubramanian 1994; d’Astous and Chartier 2000; Ford applied to research into advertising, which can be seen as 1993). Many variations on this “hybrid” technique share visual rhetoric (Schroeder 2002). Tanaka’s (1994) one feature: the promotional intent of the brand exposure is distinction (referred to in Hackley 2005) between not made explicit. Product placement, also referred to as “ostensive” and “covert” meaning operationalises the brand placement, “embedded” marketing or rhetoric of implicit-ness in advertising. Ostensive meaning “entertainment” marketing (Hackley 2003; Tiwsakul et al. is explicit in the sense that the sender is known and the 2005) has been popular in movies from Hollywood to message is explicit. Covert meaning differs in that the Bollywood since the 1920s (Barn 2005; Fristoe 2005). sender is not known and the message is not explicit. It is Most