Product Placement: The Beast Evolves

Adverts - apparently - have never been easier to miss.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary - gleaming big-titted supermodels and their boyfriends flogging shampoo from every bus shelter, billboard, internet site and glossy magazine - commercial broadcasters are getting a bit worried that consumers might not be getting the message.

They don’t like the idea that - what in this new digital age of ‘on-demand’ TV and the unique yet rarely used ‘Off’ Button - the huddled proles can fast-forward through all those carefully constructed adverts with nary a glimpse of the stuff they are being instructed to buy.

So the advertisers went scuttling to the European Union. They bought the European Union a couple of drinks and told it that it was really beautiful, and in return the European Union is considering making In-show product placement completely legal in Europe.

Of course, no-one bats an eyelid about this sort of thing in America. Over there a Pepsi T-shirt wearing Britney Spears (CDs) could crash through a Pepsi-logo decorated TV studio wall on a Pepsi-branded horse, guzzling down eighteen cans of Pepsi in a row while screaming the words "Dear God I fucking love Pepsi" for 36 solid Pepsi-sponsored hours. This would seem perfectly normal.

In America:

"American Idol judges drink from prominent glasses of
Coca Cola, Desperate Housewives has promoted Buick cars and characters
in 24 extol the virtues of Cisco computer security."

In dear old Blighty, however, we have the institution known as the BBC.

The BBC would not stand for any of this nonsense. This is because the BBC is run by a stately 90-year-old gentleman who sits at his dining table, sipping from an endless cup of tea and muttering "good gracious" whenever he reads about something particularly rambunctious in the Financial Times.

The BBC would never allow Peter Sissons to wear a Reebok baseball cap. Or let the Today programme do an in-depth feature on why Cheese Flavour Doritos are the bestest most special thing in the universe ever.

Yet Britain also has the ITV network. ITV is for plebs. ITV is for the sort of mouth-breathing arsebrain muppet who guffaws uproariously whenever Ant and Dec dress up as ladies. ITV would probably leap at the chance to shovel advertising into every broadcastable nook and cranny - kind of like a dumpster funnelling shit through an orphanage window until all the children have suffocated.

This is why the National Consumer Council (NCC) is getting quite anxious. They claim:

"UK broadcasting is some of the best in the world. We love the standard of our programmes here. Product placement would seriously undermine that. For
broadcasters, the editorial integrity of programmes and the trust that
we then as viewers have in British broadcasting would be fundamentally
undermined."

hecklerspray says: you might want to get quite anxious too. You might want to write to TV regulatory board Ofcom and voice your concern.

Or … you know. Just chill out.

With a cool and refreshing bottle of Budweiser.

Read More:

Warning Over TV Product Placement - BBC

[story by C J Davies]