Is Product Placement Hurting People’s Trust in the Media? |

Is Product Placement Hurting People’s Trust in the Media?

According to a recent article published in guardian.co.uk, product placement may be affecting people’s trust in media such as television. Not exactly sure what product placement is? Product placement or embedded marketing, according to Wikipedia is

… a type of advertising in which promotional advertisements placed by marketers using real commercial products and services in media where the presence of a particular brand is the result of an economic exchange. When featuring a product is not part of an economic exchange, it is called a product plug.

Product placement happens all the time. It usually pops up in plays, television series, video games and books. Product placement is perhaps most notoriously displayed, however, in many music videos (particularly rap/hip-hop videos). But people are getting fed up with it. According to the Guardian, it reports that the British government is fighting to ban product placement on UK television due to the risk of “further harming trust in TV”. Additionally, the ratings from traditional TV commercials in the UK have been in decline. Many viewers feel that product placement contaminates regular programming, leading some to not know whether or not the scripts for shows were written by writers or by advertising and marketing agents. It’s deceptive.

Perhaps one of the biggest examples of product placement in the United States at the moment revolves around the popular show American Idol in which the contestants are shown driving Ford vehicles around. Another example could be seen back in 2004 when Oprah gave all of her audience members brand new Pontiac vehicles. While product placement is annoying at best, I think that most of us know that television is mostly there to entertain – not to actually dole out factual information.