Products in Place

As you’ve probably read in the news, product placement is now permitted on TV.

Product placement is the practice of paying for a product to be shown within a TV show. It has been commonplace for years in the USA and also in films. Recent Bond films, for example, have seen painful amounts of product placement – most notably Sony and Omega. The practice was brilliantly spoofed in Wayne’s World, where Wayne and Garth refused to bend to corporate pressure.

So why has this practice been banned in the UK? The basic reason is that product placement acts in a much more subliminal way than traditional advertising. As soon as an advert comes on, you know what I is, but your defences are down when watching a TV programme.

I actually agree with this theory. It is nice, for once, not to be advertised to. Everywhere you go nowadays there is advertising – you can’t even use a public toilet without staring at a poster of some sort.

However, I don’t really think it is worth getting het up over. Is life really going to be that much worse? Also, will people really run off to the corner shop as soon as they see Ken Barlow tucking into a Dairy Milk?

It is estimated that up to £100 million a year may be raised by product placement. If at least some of that goes into making a show for ITV that doesn’t involve pets, prizes, singing or singing pets winning prizes, then I’ll be happy.