It is just a spoof: spoof placements and their impact on conceptual persuasion knowledge, brand memory, and brand evaluation

Brand placements are a widely used advertising technique in entertainment media such as movies or TV shows. Yet, the presented brand placements do not always portray real brands. In media content like comedies, brand placements are occasionally spoof brands, which humorously mimic the real brand in their name and logo. Yet, how spoof brand placements might spill over to the referenced real brand and how viewers process spoof brand placements has never been tested. We recruited 200 participants between the ages of 16 to 66 to take part in an empirical examination. With a one-factorial experimental design (no brand references vs. real brand placement vs. spoof placement), we examined the effects of spoof placements on brand recall, activation of conceptual persuasion knowledge, and brand evaluation. We found that spoof brands significantly affect explicit brand memory of the referenced, real brand; however, they do not activate conceptual persuasion knowledge to the same extent as real brand placements do. We did not find an effect of our three conditions on brand evaluation of the real brand.