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Group Asks Gov't to Crack Down on Product Placement
Buck Mulligan writes "The rise of commercial-skipping Tivo has resulted in greater reliance on "product placement," and Commercial Alert has filed a petition (pdf) with the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to crack down on the practice. Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert writes: "The interweaving of advertising and programming has become so routine that television networks now are selling to advertisers a measure of control over aspects of their programming. Some programs are so packed with product placements that they are approaching the appearance of infomercials. The head of a company that obtained repeated product placements actually called one such program 'a great infomercial.' Yet these programs typically lack the disclosure required of infomercials to uphold honesty and fair dealing.""
Kill their ratings and it will stop. Simple. Besides, it has Paul Anka's guarantee.
When all else fails, run.
I heard howard interview a b-movie actress who said that she gets paid by advertisers to drop a product name on interview shows (eg: The tonight show).
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
I was watching ER, and they had three of their products in promenetly displayed near some binders at the check-in nursing station thing. Why would a nurses station need to have software such as ArcServIT, BrightStor, UniCenter, etc.. all nicely lined up next to the monitor of their PC? It's just so odd, and does not fit in with the audience at all. These are Enterprise software suites that cost thousands of dollars.
Additionally, I saw the very same CA lineup in "Just Shoot Me", behind the CEO's desk, next to pictures of his family, and stuff. It would make so much more sense if the product placements were appropriate to the audience.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
Why should the government impose any limits at all on advertising? If enough people die from taking drugs for a condition where the drug hurts rather than helps, people will stop buying that drug, right?
Government intervention may be appropriate here because product placement is a form of commercial speech, and courts have recognized that the government has legitimate interest in limiting some forms of commercial speech. The steps you hypothesize for the market to limit the product are naive: How many old TV shows or movies stopped using cigarettes because they caused lung cancer?
I seriously doubt Tivos with their puny penetration have anything to do with it. They should blame it on something called the remote control. That and increasing competition for advertising giving greater power to those that hold the money.
I honestly have not seen really obnoxious examples of product placement but then I don't watch much network tv.
It isn't really about restricting advertising in TV shows, it's about the truth of those advertisements. There are restrictions on what you can say in a normal ad (you can't create an ad that says smoking cigarettes will cure lung cancer). The issue is whether the cigarette company could instead pay a tv show to do it for them.
Characters in TV shows and movies have to use various items as props. Sometimes these are chosen with business motivations in mind. As a viewer, I'm okay with this, as long as it does not detract from the show.
For instance, Halle Berry has a Ford Thunderbird in the latest 007 film. That's fine. But if Bond had borrowed it for a gratuitous car chase, all the while commenting on its superb handling and acceleration, that would certainly have ruined the movie. Stick a product in in a context where one might realistically encounter it. Don't comment on it, extol its virtues, or zoom in for a close up of it.
Trying too hard to avoid product placement can be just as distracting. A can labelled "COLA" and with a not-quite-Coke design looks fake. Pixellating out the names of products and stores as if they were nudity is annoying.
Basically, I don't care whether the hero reaches for a Dasani or an Aquafina as long as it's unobtrusive, realistic for the character, non-distracting, and so on. If the audience consciously notices the item as being plugged, the advertising was too conspicuous.