ARTEFACT 5

Artefact5

I wanted to investigate in more detail how effective product placement is without people being consciously aware. I had to further my research about the subconscious mind. I read books and researched on the web. Books including the power of the sub conscious mind by J Murphy and The buying brain: Secrets for selling to the subconscious mind by A K Pradeep have been very resourceful in the fact they have given evidence to back and give me a justified reason to carry out artefact 5.

For Artefact five I wanted to focus on something very specific. From artefact four I learnt that a persons background life is a major contribution to observing product placement whether it is subtle or not in a film/programme. Also product placement that is very in your face can be seen as obtrusive. People dislike this and refer it to traditional advertising.  I concluded that people think that with very subtle product placement, they thought it would not be as effective as more obvious active product placement.

I wanted to investigate in more detail how effective product placement is without people being consciously aware. The human mind is capable of many things and the mind is very powerful. Using previous research, I have found that when I have asked the participants what brands they have seen in a clip, they have been missing a few out especially subtle product placements. But the further the conversion lasts, they mention brands that they did not mention when asked what brands they saw. This is because at the time they cannot recall them when asked but a trigger in the brain, it may be a word said in the conversation that they can suddenly recall the brand.

Artefact 5 is a scientific experiment. I put together a film clip with very obvious product placement and very subtle product placement from different films, subtler than in Artefact four. I then made a collage of 17 images. Four of the images were used as product placement in the film which were the very subtle ones. However the four images used in the collage were the same brand but not exactly the same products used in the clip.

I then used forty individuals for the experiment. I got them to watch the clip without being told anything. I then asked them what brands they managed to spot. I expected them to notice the very obvious ones such as coca cola and Smirnoff and I was right.

I then showed them the collage of images and explained four of them were used in the clip and to circle them. There is evidence to explain that the brain remembers seen objects without people being aware of this.  And so I was hoping that the products circled were the ones shown in the clip to reflect that when they are shown again the brain remembers them.

Results

The results reflected that my thoughts were correct. Over eighty percent of the participants circled the correct products that were in the clip. Most who circled incorrect products circled an image that was a Chanel lipstick was used in the clip. In my opinion people remembered the lipstick so presumed that was used in the film clip.

Therefore to conclude people thought that very subtle product placement was not effective, however this proves them wrong. Just because they cannot recall the brand seen at the time does not mean that they have not observed it. This has an impact on my research question to state that peoples perspective can change without them being consciously aware however further research would have to be conducted on a larger scale to conclude whether this would be positive or negative.