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A recent study shows that placing audio-visual examples of healthy food consumption in the TV shows that pre-adolescents watch can effectively lead to more positive attitudes toward such foods and healthier food choices. This overturns an assumption that pro-social placements are like their commercial counterparts, which are most persuasively promoted via solely visual placements.

Based on an interview with Karine Charry, associate professor of marketing, and on her article “Product placement and the promotion of healthy food to pre-adolescents” (International Journal of Advertising, no. 33, 2014).

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Biography

IÉSEG associate professor of marketing Karine Charry teaches master’s level courses on consumer behavior, persuasion, and social marketing. She spent the first 10 years of her career in Belgian industry, holding positions in product, brand, and corporate responsibility management. She holds a PhD in applied economics and management from Louvain School of Management (Belgium).

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Research method

72 children between the ages of 8 and 11 were shown 90-second videos from a popular television series featuring 2 embedded placements of healthy foods. 37 children were exposed to solely visual (unimodal) placements; 35 were exposed to audio-visual (bimodal) placements, and all completed questionnaires that revealed the likelihood of their making healthy food choices. Participants exposed to bimodal placements were 71.4% more likely than the others to subsequently make healthy food choices.

Karine Charry has been studying obesity prevention since 2009, focusing on how to use known marketing techniques and practices to serve this pro-social objective. “In this particular study, we looked at a very common practice: product placement,” she explains. The technique is increasingly popular and has been used especially heavily in the past 10 years. A study that Charry is familiar with demonstrates that when it comes to commercial placements of branded items, unimodal placements are more effective than bimodal.

Charry wondered if this pattern would still apply to unbranded product placements, which are subtler. She answers this question in a recently published study where she looked at whether unbranded product placements can effectively influence healthy food choices among pre-teens.

Pre-adolescence: a critical phase for autonomy, awareness, and choices

“Pre-adolescence is a pivotal point in development, because children are gaining autonomy,” Charry explains. “They are developing preferences, building attitudes, and yet they are still impressionable.”

In contrast, younger children’s tastes constantly change, and bona fide teenagers resist influence. “Concretely, 8-to-12 year olds are gaining significant autonomy. They have pocket money that they use to buy snacks, and we know that children prefer what they choose themselves. In addition, kids fully understand the issue of image and are sensitive to how they are likely to be perceived in various situations. In this study, we were very interested in finding out whether placements could have a positive effect on children’s image of healthy eating and whether that could make a genuine difference in their food choices.”

The study results confirm the power of product placements to influence pre-teens’ food choices. Seeing a well-liked character on a TV show eating healthy foods makes them more likely to choose similar foods themselves. Given the previously known effectiveness of product placements with both adults and children, Charry had expected an encouraging outcome, but she was surprised by the degree of impact. “The videos were short. They only lasted 90 seconds, featured just 2 embedded healthy food placements, and were watched only once.” Yet children were nearly 72% more likely to select healthy foods afterward.

Charry considers this potent finding to result from the combination of three factors: the fundamental advantage of non-branded placements, which people do not resist or analyze as they do traditional ads; the urge to copy the behavior of an appealing character, which is also why celebrity endorsements of branded products work well; and last but not least, the “mere exposure effect”. “When people have been exposed to something, even briefly, this creates familiarity, and people tend to prefer the familiar to the unfamiliar. When traveling abroad, for example, people are far more likely to buy a known brand of toothpaste or shampoo, for instance, than to purchase a local brand.”

Boosting healthy eating

Charry’s most significant finding concerns the conditions that boost placement effectiveness. When it comes to promoting healthy food choices, using both video and audio (bimodal) placements — for example, a video with audio of an endearing bad boy who picks up a carrot stick and says, “I want a carrot too! (crunch)” — is far more effective than just visual placements for unbranded product placements.

Charry comments, “We questioned the children who saw the videos with bimodal placements about their attitudes toward people who were eating healthy food and compared their answers with those of the control group. We found that it is indeed helpful for children to see healthy eating in a positive way on TV. Children are sensitive to the image they project, so seeing a favorite character eating healthy foods makes their perception of how they will be seen when engaging in the same behavior more ‘cool’.”

Charry stresses the importance of subtly, and not patronizingly, encouraging pre-teens to make positive food choices. As for the ethical question of whether children should be deliberately persuaded, she says, “Parents have been questioned, and they are willing to accept and even support persuasion when they consider the end goal to be worthwhile.” When it comes to healthy eating and obesity prevention, this is obviously the case.

Pro-social vs. pro-commercial objectives

“I would not advise anyone to apply the findings from this study to brands, because we have uncovered a difference in appropriate modality for brands vs. unbranded products,” says Charry. In addition, the time frame for the two types of objectives is hardly compatible.

When it comes to pro-social issues, persuasion is difficult, because the positive impact of the desired behavior is not necessarily visible for quite a while, if ever. People cannot immediately benefit from the lesser environmental harm that comes from using green cleaning products, for example, while eating healthy foods can mean not becoming obese or developing high cholesterol or heart disease. On the other hand, “There is no reason to believe the placement methods outlined in the study would not be equally effective when applied to issues like ecological products or smoking prevention. There are a few studies that produced similar findings with regard to smoking, albeit with an older target.”

This study was conducted in a French primary school, but Charry refutes assumptions that France is somehow protected from obesity by a culture of healthy eating. “Obesity is a worldwide issue, even if it is currently more pronounced in certain countries. Ads for unhealthy foods need to be counter-balanced with initiatives that effectively promote healthy eating, because people everywhere consider what they see on TV basically to be representative of shared practices.”

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Applications in the workplace

• This study offers valuable insight for business managers, public policy makers, and screenwriters. It encourages responsible management behavior that is compatible with business interests.
• For business managers, the study clarifies a critical difference between branded vs. unbranded product placements. Pro-social issues or products are more effectively promoted via bimodal rather than unimodal placements.
• Given the global threat of obesity, governments and businesses with a voice in the entertainment industry could request healthy product placements in sponsored programs geared toward pre-adolescent audiences.
• Screenwriters can see how to subtly but deliberately introduce healthy foods in their scenarios in ways that are likely to have a positive impact.

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