From Apple to Omega: an analysis of brand placement in 2010 top-earning films

How brands appear in children's movies. A systematic content analysis of the past 25 Years

“…Children's movies differ from movies aimed at adult viewers. For instance, children's movies are often animated (Devlin and Combs 2015) and thus are less likely to contain brand placements. In non-animated movies, brands can be used as props and are easily inserted into the storyline, since products regularly embedded in the plot like cars, foods, clothes, or technical equipment are usually branded.…”

“…Previous studies have concentrated on the top earning movies in general (Devlin and Combs 2015;Galician and Bourdeau 2004;Sutherland et al 2010) with no specific focus on children's movies. Children's movies, however, can occur in various sceneries and present different main-characters (e.g.…”

“…These brand appearances are not coincidences but a deliberative advertising technique, the so called 'product or brand placements' (Karrh 1998). Product placement practices occur in movies (Devlin and Combs 2015;Ferraro and Avery 2000), music videos (Burkhalter and Thornton 2014;Schemer et al 2008), computer games (Lee et al 2009), or TV-shows (La Ferle and Edwards 2006). A vast amount of placements are specifically made for children (Moore 2004).…”

“…Despite the importance of this topic, we lack a systematic longitudinal content analysis of movies targeting children. Extant research only provides limited insights about how placements in movies have changed over the years (Devlin and Combs 2015). Sutherland et al (2010) analyzed just 10 years (1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005), and they have only focused on food and restaurant brands, leaving other product categories unobserved.…”

“…This is relevant because placements are unregulated, highly professionalized, and accepted in the US Findings about the US may thus not be generalizable to other countries. And since previous studies have focused on either one product category (Sutherland et al 2010), one point in time (Devlin and Combs 2015), or one country (Devlin and Combs 2015;Galician and Bourdeau 2004;Sutherland et al 2010), we present the most comprehensive content analysis of children's movies to date, with the most ample code book.…”