It’s been a few months later than it should, but it looks like UK television will finally get the nod for product placement. There’s still a while to go yet before it finally gets approval, but if it does finally happen, it’ll be a long-needed change to the rules.
When then culture secretary Andy Burnham said there were “serious concerns” about product placement, he was doing the British public a disservice. It’s not as if product placement is a new concept that audiences may find it hard to understand.
And, to me, a good indication of how well something is understood is if the audience can understand a simple joke around it, and judging by the amount of films with product placement related jokes in, they understand it pretty well.
Back in 1992, Mike Myers inserted a wonderfully simple – and still very funny – product placement gag into Wayne’s World.
Without wanting to analyze the joke to death, the product placement joke worked on several levels and required a degree of understanding from the audience. Myers has a good grasp of product placement jokes, especially around Starbucks in the Austin Powers movies.
Obviously the entertainment industry isn’t likely to bite the hand that feeds it, but there have been other examples, heading way back. The Truman Show has Truman’s wife desperately trying to shoehorn a product placement into a domestic argument, while Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol 1 makes its own point about product placement by prominently featuring a raft of hyper-real fictional products. Latterly, the Orange adverts have also got in on the fun.
But, you may say, these are films and not TV. True, but then audiences have been watching films full of product placement for years now and, to date, nobody’s seen a significant breakdown in society.
Take the James Bond franchise. A new Bond film, an event in itself, will typically have around 20 brand partners with products in the film. Die Another Day raked in somewhere around $100m through placement. Yet, despite the odd clunky moment (“Is that a Rolex?” “Omega”) the films are often none the worse for being littered with brands; fitting given the style and endless brand namechecking in Fleming’s books.
Viewers are also familiar with US TV and, even though imports are censored for placement where possible (think blurred out tumblers on American Idol), viewers are savvy enough to know when they’re being marketed to. The ham-fisted attempt at censorship just draws more attention to the placement.
Then there’s the added level of realism that product placement brings. We use brands on a daily basis. Some have even entered our lexicon. Yet characters still head into a pub and ask for a pint of beer, or use non-branded or fictional products to a frustrating level (although, in a weird full circle, so fictional products become so successful they cross the line into real life).
I take the point about exchange quality for more adverts. I take the point we’re bombarded with adverts on a daily basis elsewhere, and can do without it ruining our favourite TV programmes. I especially take the point that product placement shouldn’t be inserted into children’s programmes, and the government if right to keep this as an exception.
But there are balances that need to be struck. If we want commercial broadcasting to keep producing high quality dramas, original comedies, or watercooler-worthy entertainment shows, we have to accept they need to be funded somehow, which means advertising.
It’s never been easier to skip through adverts and, like adverts in print newspapers, you can’t be sure anybody’s actually watching – a nation can quite easily use an ad break for a mass cuppa or loo break.
So that makes product placement a lot more attractive to a brand, and easier to sell for the broadcaster. Does a company want a 30 second spot that some people may see or a placement in the programme that everybody will see.
At a time when commercial broadcasting is in need of a cash boost, it has made no sense to continue to ban product placement. It won’t be the panacea to all woes, but it will help.
And, for once, I agree with Steve Hewlett when he says that badly-done product placement will see viewers turning off.
Sure, there will be some shows that take the money and produce an unwatchable advert, just as cinema has produced some clunkers where brands take centre-stage – Daredevil and Castaway are two that spring to mind.
But there’s no reason why the two can’t co-exist and produce something that everybody is happy with. Proof can be found in Shane Meadows’ Somers Town, originally intended to be a short film funded by Eurostar, but one that ended up turning into a rather delightful feature film.
The two can co-exist and we, as audiences, are mature enough to understand when we’re being sold something, without the need to be told we’re being sold a product (a plan to come out of government, which was, frankly, patronising).
By all means have a framework or code of conduct (and I’d support this idea), but in this day and age, there’s no good reason why our favourite TV stars can’t refresh themselves with a Bud after a long day’s work, before doing the weekly shop at Sainsbury’s before curling up on the sofa with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s.
Ok, so that may sound like a lot of brands just in one sentence, but think how, well, ordinary that is. If I told you that’s how I spent my evening, you wouldn’t bat and eyelid, and nor should we when our fictional counterparts do the same.
[Disclosure: I work for ITV in a communities/PR capacity, but these views are entirely my own. Plus, my university dissertation, many moons ago, was on the subject of product placement, so it's a subject I've always retained an interest in, and would do regardless of where I worked.]
Gary – an excellently written post. One question comes to mind though – with the arrival of product placement on our screens, will it reduce the amount of time allocated to ad breaks?
If you’re saying that ad breaks are more skippable than ever – and I accept that point – mightn’t it be an idea to reduce the frequency of them in favour of the more effective in-programme placements? In our house, we actually watch most programmes 15 minutes later than they start so that we can fast-forward the breaks.
We, as audiences, are mature enough to understand when we’re being sold something, without the need to be told we’re being sold a product.
I’m not convinced – product placements can be much more subtle than a Coca-Cola on an American Idol judge’s desk or Mike Myers scoffing Pizza Hut. Your reasoning that product placement would be obvious to the viewer is influenced by the fact that you’re only able to immediately recall the obvious ones; the subtler ones by their very nature are going to pass under the radar. You have no way of knowing whether or not there are ones where you didn’t realise you were being sold to.
There are other murkier aspects to product placement; if an advertiser is directly funding a programme’s content, do they start having some say in how that content is shown? Take the example of a well-known brand photoshopping a black person out of their adverts in Eastern Europe to cater to what they regarded as local prejudices. Will brands start having a say over whether they want their product associated with a black character in a TV drama, or a gay character, or a female character?
Finally, there’s no mention of disclosure of when a programme is funded by placement, in any of the coverage of the proposals. You’ve quite rightly pointed out at the bottom of your post, your own possible conflict of interest given your employer is ITV – and from my perspective, working in social media PR & marketing we constantly make sure that we disclose when we’re working for a client to avoid falling foul of consumer misrepresentation legislation. Yet the placement industry (as far as I can see) may enjoy significantly less transparency; if product placement is to go ahead, a publicly-accessible register of which brands have placements in which programmes (along with how much they paid) so that consumers can be fully informed when they’re being sold to, should be a minimum safeguard.
Gerard, I think that’s a very good point. At least with product placement advertisers can be more sure their product is being seen than a plain advert.
Chris, you make some good points and I’m somewhat torn between some form of register, or other transparent method, or (and I really don’t want to sound Daily Mail-ish by using this word) being overly nannying and instead assuming audiences are mature enough to understand (which is my normal setting).
Not sure I’d go quite as far as a register, although maybe broadcasters could keep a list online of all products featured in said programmes and put a note in the credits or highlight it with continuity. That way if people are interested enough, they can head to the website.
Re: subtle placements – the Myers and American Idol examples are somewhat extreme (and I used Wayne’s World mainly to highlight the satire). However, you could also argue that the ones that are too subtle and pass under the radar aren’t really doing their job if you can’t remember them, so that isn’t such an issue.
Interestingly, for dissertation research purposes some years ago, I sat down and listed every piece of product placement in Die Another Day. I had to watch the film three times over to get every one (not something I’d recommend). There were a lot I missed first and second time around and had no idea they were there until I started looking for them. Even to this day, I’m convinced I missed one or two. If I did, and to the third-time placements, they’re certainly not doing their job.
As for content, that’s a good point. The optimistic idealist in me would hope and like to think they wouldn’t shape the content or prejudices to that extent and that it would get out if they did.
Actually, the way you outline it, I think my idea of a register and your idea of a list are pretty much coincidental.
As to the subtle vs. blatant placements – I think you’re missing an important distinction; there is a difference between a placement being consciously remembered as being a marketing message (like Mike Myers & Pizza Hut), and a placement being more subconsciously taken as “something good”, by linking it with a celebrity or lifestyle or desirable outcome, as a result of placement. You might not notice an ostentatious placement for a product in a movie as a marketing move, but it will still carry in your mind as ‘something good’ on a more subliminal level. In fact that’s the very intent behind not just product placement but much advertising – outright marketing messages are usually rejected by the public; I can’t remember who it was (but it was probably David Ogilvy) who said the art of advertising was convincing the audience they weren’t being advertised to; product placement is almost the perfect form of doing so, which is why we need to make sure it’s as honest and open as possible while it does it.