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The brand that wasn’t there: The impact of brand displacement on viewer engagement and brand attitude

  • Original Empirical Research
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Abstract

Brand placement is a well-established marketing tactic that benefits both brands and media. However, due to financial, legal, or image reasons, brands may choose not to be associated with certain content. In such cases, the brand logo is removed, or “displaced” from the production either digitally or physically to adhere to copyright law, a practice we define as brand displacement. This research explores the psychological and brand consequences of brand displacement. Using multiple brands and content, we find brand displacement can positively or negatively impact the displaced brand, depending on consumers’ need for cognition. We show these divergent consequences are driven by displacement’s effects on consumer engagement in the viewing experience and follow an affect-transfer process. We find these consequences are moderated by brand familiarity and offer interventions for marketers to use displacement strategically. A preliminary EEG study, pilot with marketing managers, four primary, and multiple supplemental support our theorizing.

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Fig. 1
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Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We selected Coca-Cola as the brand because it (a) is positively-viewed, (b) incorporates placement in its strategy, and (c) is positioned to benefit from this tactic (market leader in its respective industry, Russell & Belch, 2005).

  2. We included the introduction to provide context and to disguise the brand (dis)placement interest of this study.

  3. The measurement of emotional reactions using the Emotiv EEG headset has been validated by multiple independent research studies (e.g., Inventado et al., 2011; Khushaba et al., 2013; Williams et al., 2020).

  4. We note that we also asked an exploratory brand recall measure as part of a separate study; however, recall is not the focus of our investigation and as such is not discussed in the main discussion.

  5. If participants listed cost or image on both brand and production sides, this was only recorded once in the total score.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank June Cotte, Darren Dahl, Avi Goldfarb, Dale Griffin, Joey Hoegg, Brent McFerran, Andrea Morales, and Adriana Samper for their helpful comments.

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  1. Kirk Kristofferson and Lea Dunn contributed equally to this research.

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  1. Ivey Business School, Western University, London, ON, N6G 0N1, Canada

    Kirk Kristofferson

  2. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    Lea Dunn

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Appendices

Appendix A

Examples of displacement in practice

figure a

Appendix B

Study stimuli

figure b

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Kristofferson, K., Dunn, L. The brand that wasn’t there: The impact of brand displacement on viewer engagement and brand attitude. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 51, 716–745 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-022-00901-7

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