Have you seen any AY Live videos or any video on YouTube? Have you heard musicians call out names of popular or notable personalities in their songs? Have you seen '30 Days in Atlanta'?
If your answer is yes to the above questions then you have come across products placement with or without your consent.
From movies, short films, music videos, and other products under the movies and music category, products placement has helped generate revenue for movie and music producers around the world. Interestingly products placement in Nigeria is not a new phenomenon; King Sunny Ade and several musicians in the 80s employed the use of products placement to generate revenue from their records. Wizkid cleverly employed the use of products placement as a tool to facilitate his entrance into the adult market when he released Pakurumo featuring Funke Akindele and some other notable personalities in the Nigerian Entertainment business.
Lots of technology platforms in the Nigerian Tech space are chasing big funding to help facilitate marketing of their platforms when they can harness the power of products placement and sponsor minimal budget products with very great potential as a trade off for products placement.
Marketing teams in tech startups need to study the landscape and utilize trends. A common question among marketers is 'how do we get the word out without breaking our budgets'. An answer to that will be to engage a network of music/movie directors and producers. It is important to note that nollywood has considerable amount of penetration that startups are in dire need of to get their brands out in the public domain. Leveraging on a network of music/movie directors and producers will help identify entertainment products that Tech companies can buy into and use to penetrate uncharted territories.
Also, reward systems have proven to be very effective for word of mouth evangelism of brands. Setting up a reward system that gives customers freebies that carry either the brand's story and/or trademarks is another tool for below the line marketing that when utilised appropriately can fetch the brand new customers and help retain existing customers.
Imagine the possibilities embedded in a Tech Startup sponsoring a movie like "Back from South" featuring Francis Odega.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHZegAI5QtI