Abstract
The chapter aims to analyze the case of musical branded content for a car brand. In a global universe where the saturation of traditional advertising is a fact, the automotive sector seeks to interact with its target audience by offering them audiovisual pieces that connect with their emotions through its brand. In this chapter the authors will analyze an action carried out by the Citroën brand: The Road Song DS3. The research yields interesting results. On the one hand, the brand opted for the creation of branded content to connect with an audience with which it could not otherwise connect, and on the other, to strengthen relations with the press, since the contracting of content with the media serves as economic support, generating a positive engagement between the two.
TopBackground
The background section shares the meaning and existing literature to understand branded content and product placement traditional and new media, brand placement and storytelling, all embedded in the automotive industry. To do this we will start by giving figures of what the automotive sector means for the Spanish economy and its prominence in the advertising sector.
The automotive industry is an economic and industrial pillar in Spain. According to ANFAC (Spanish Association of Automobile and Truck Manufacturers) in its Annual Report 2020, the weight of the automotive sector in the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), including distribution, insurance, and finance, has exceeded 11%. The automobile manufacturers installed in Spain had a sales volume of 69,500 million euros and manufactured 2,268,185 vehicles. This industry in Spain accounts for 8% of employment over the active population, including not only vehicle manufacturers, but also equipment and components, activities complementary to manufacturing, distribution, after-sales, financial services and insurance, transportation, service stations, rental and driving schools (ANFAC, Annual Report 2020).
Automotive is one of the three sectors with the highest advertising investment in Spain, occupying the first position from 2007 to 2012 and from 2013 to 2016 occupying the second, only in 2014 occupying the third position. Likewise, among the 20 companies that invested the most in advertising in recent years are seven manufacturers (Infoadex, 2018, 2019) (Bonales, 2020). In 2019, the automotive sector was the sector that invested the most in advertising taking 13.2% of the total investment in Spain. According to investment volume, the Volkswagen Group was the number one and the PSA Peugeot Citroën Group the fourth (Infoadex, 2019). As for branded content, the estimated actual investment in millions of euros was 316.3 in 2018, 357.9 in 2019 and 363.7 in 2020, therefore, as we can appreciate, investment in this channel continues to rise, showing the importance that brands give to this new communication with the customer (Infoadex, 2020).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Branded content: content produced by a brand that reflects the values of the product or brand performing the action, including product placement of a product.
Storytelling: It is about telling a brand in a story. The central principle of creating good brand stories is to construct indices, such as locations, decisions, actions, attitudes, difficulties, decisions or conclusions.
Product Placement: Placement of a brand's product in an audiovisual or written piece, whether it is a film, a television series, or a report in a magazine or newspaper.
New Media: It is described in terms of changes in production of communicated information due to convergence of technology and media, storage (digitisation and indexing), presentation (in a video display of sorts), and distribution over telecommunication networks.
Brand Awareness: Refers to whether consumers can recall or recognize a brand, or simply whether consumers know about a brand.
Traditional advertising: It is what usually mentions an advertisement. This includes newspaper ads, radio ads, tv ads or magazine ads.
Brand Placement: Refers to the paid inclusion of branded products or just the brand, through audio and/or visual, or in any mass media.