Will My Company Garner Incremental Sales Through Product Placement? by Ian McQueen

What's my Return On Investment? a reasonable question for a company to ask when investing in any form of advertising. When it comes product placement (as well as other forms of traditional advertising), measuring ROI is a difficult task. For most brands, product sales that can be directly linked to a specific advertising campaign defines their ROI. Whether you are running a print campaign in national publications, airing :30sec commercials on network television or integrating your product into an episode of Entourage, tracking incremental consumer activity is never a straight forward process.

There have been many successful stories over the years the confirm direct sales from a product being placed in a movie or television show. The most famous is Reese's Pieces being featured in the blockbuster Amblin Entertainment film ET. But for every "ET" story, there are 1,000's of situations where brands are not able to measure sales based on product placement marketing. Does that mean it is not effective? Absolutely not!

Your expectations have a lot do with how you can effectively measure product placement. If you expect off the charts sales increases and consumers clamoring for your products every time it is featured in a movie or television show, you need to rethink moving ahead with a product placement program. There is no guarantee that ALL of your product placements will be home runs and consumers will be lined up for your products at retail.  What can be guaranteed with a comprehensive product placement program  are impressions and branding. What we can absolutely tell you is that your product was featured (logo exposure) in 10 episodes of NCIS during the season, garnering over 160 million first run impressions. What we can also tell you is that through product placement your company will receive invaluable branding due to implied celebrity endorsement and association with high profile entertainment properties.

An effective product placement program will help move your brand forward, creating familiarity for your products with consumers worldwide. Incremental sales are the icing on the cake!