Product Placement on Television

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Product Placement on Television
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• Commercial Alerts Request to the FTC and FCC for
  Guidelines to Require Disclosure of TV Product
  Placement

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• keep the commercial culture within its proper
  sphere, and prevent it from exploiting children
  and subverting the higher values of family,
  community, environmental integrity and democracy.

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• Put simply, TV networks and stations are
  shifting advertising from commercial breaks to
  programming itself. They are inserting branded
  products directly into programs, in exchange for
  substantial fees or other consideration.

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• Remote controls and TiVo enable viewers to avoid
  ads
• A substantial majority of viewers are
• fed up with advertising generally and on
  television in particular
• Looking for ways to avoid ads
• Advertisers find embedded ads effective because
  viewers are caught off guard

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• Some programs so packed with placements they
  resemble infomercials
• But lack disclosure requirements of infomercials
• Particularly problematic where children are
  involved
• Children more vulnerable to this influence
• Are they program length commercials?

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Product integration

• a presence woven into the plotlineoften across
  multiple episodesaccompanied at the very least
  by a supporting medial buy and, at best, by an
  integrated marketing and public relations
  campaign replete with a sweepstakes overlay and
  other consumer touchpoints

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Examples

• CBS Survivor
• GM, Reebok, Target
• Fox American Idol
• Ford, Coca Cola
• ABC Who Wants to be a Millionaire
• ATT

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• CSI Miami
• Extreme Makeover Home Edition
• The Apprentice
• Oprah Winfrey

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Product placement is growing

• Nielsen Media Research and Advertising age track
  placements
• Approaching 1 billion in revenue
• Survey by Association of National Advertisers
  indicated 63 took part in branded
  entertainment
• Networks planning shows that eliminate
  traditional commercials altogether

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Product placement works

• Reeces Pieces/ET
• 65
• RayBan/Risky Business
• Tripled in one month
• Successful product placements are more effective
  than ads at generating recall, promoting brand
  awareness and ultimately, increasing sales at a
  fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.

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• When somebody is jumping up and down because
  they have a beer as a reward, and they make it
  seem like its the greatest liquid they ever
  drank in their lives and theyre real peoplethat
  probably is more effective than having some model
  saying Hey, drink Budweiser. It can be very
  effective.

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Evidence suggests product placement may be
implicated in epidemic of marketing-related
diseases in children

• Obesity
• Type-2 diabetes
• Alcoholism
• Smoking-related health problems
• gambling

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• Is it totally coincidental that the products
  associated with the epidemic of marketing-related
  diseases are the very ones that the marketing
  industry has been pushing through stealth
  adsjunk food, soda pop, beer, alcohol, and
  gambling?

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Examples

• Soda
• Coke in American Idol and Young Americans
• Pepsi in Pepsi Smash and The Runner
• Fast Food
• McDonalds in Beg, Borrow and Deal, Nashville
  Star, Big Brother and Baywatch

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• Beer
• Anheuser-Busch in Survivor I and II
• Rolling Rock, Labatt Blue and Dos Equis in The
  Best Damn Sports Show Period
• Tobacco
• Gambling
• Casinos in Fear Factor and Las Vegas
• 20 of adolescents have gambling problem

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CAs request to the FTC

• Investigate current TV advertising practices
  regarding product placement and other embedded
  ads, and take the steps necessary to restore some
  honesty and fair dealing to the presentation of
  these ads, by requiring concurrent disclosure
  that the ads are, in fact, ads.

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CAs request to the FCC

• Product placements should be identified when
  they occur. This should be in addition to
  disclosure at the outset of a program. Disclosure
  should be large enough, and kept on the screen
  long enough, so that it can be read and
  understood.

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• Concurrent disclosure should read Advertisement
  when the product placement is on the TV screen
• Disclosure at the outset of the program should be
  in plain English, such as
• This program contains paid advertising for

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Freedom to Advertise Coalition

• Interrupting television programs with pop up
  disclosures is impractical and border on the
  ludicrous
• Pose a threat to artistic freedom
• Noted that FTC rejected similar proposal in 1992
  from Center for the Study of Commercialism
  regarding placement in movies

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FTCs response

• Principal reason for identifying an advertisement
  is that consumers give more credence to objective
  claims from third parties than from advertiser
  itself
• Cited case involving infomercial for BluBlocker
  sunglasses
• represented as investigative report
• implied reporting objective product data

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• CAs complaint does not suggest product placement
  results in consumers giving more credence to
  objective claims about product attributes
• In product placement few objective claims appear
  to be made about performance or attributes
• Thus no rationale for requiring disclosure that
  advertiser paid for placement