Brand placements, by providing endorsement opportunities for the placed brands, are becoming instrumental in influencing the buying behaviour of ad-savvy consumers. As this marketing tool gains momentum, with the regulatory barriers against the placement beginning to obliterate globally, product placement strategies such as TV placements have become an important choice for practitioners (PQ media 2012). Brand placements are unique in their capacity to include brands as verbal, visual or both, often, as a part of the plotline-the latter has been acknowledged as important factor in influencing placement effectiveness (Russell, 2002; Waiguny, Nelson and Marko, 2013). Within TV shows and movies, plot modality entails pairing of the brands with desirable characters (Karrh 1998) and embedding them in an emotive story. Emotions have been known to play an important role in the consumer information processing (Lau-Gesk and Meyers-Levy 2009). Studies exploring the memory effects largely rely on measures such as recognition or recall. However, if brand placements operate less consciously, explicit measures may be inadequate and implicit measures for memory become desirous (Yang, Roskos-Ewoldsen, Dinu and Arpan, 2006). This study examines the impact of positive emotions (Happiness, Interest) and degree of plot modality (character-brand integration) on consumers' implicit attitudes towards placed brands. In the experiments conducted, it was observed that participants exposed to placement sequences evoking positive emotions were more likely to form favourable implicit attitudes towards the placed brands, especially when the character interaction with the placed brand was low. The findings underscore the need to better understand the interplay of positive emotions and character-brands integration within placements to augment their effectiveness.

Today's dynamic market necessitates the need for the marketing communication stimuli, which engages with the audience as consumers have become less attentive to traditional advertising. It is imperative to gain deeper understanding of how brand evaluations and subsequently brand relationships are created to allow for a successful marketing strategy. Within that context, the role of characters becomes important in placing brands in TV programmes as results of this study indicate that only character interacting with the placed brands were significant for the audience's likelihood to talk about the brands shown in a given placement sequence. Thus, industry practitioners may need to identify clear outcomes for the placed brand (generate awareness, enduring attitude/likability) before adopting the placement modality and media vehicle for its execution. The findings from this study provide promising results to strengthen the growing evidence of the importance engaging consumer experiences for effective buzz-marketing.