Product Placement

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Product Placement, Product Integration, Embedded Marketing… whatever you call it the ad moguls would tell you that it’s a step away from the in-your-face ads, towards a more subtle, scenario base where the product hovers in the background.

I’m just not quite sure I want the product to hover in the background of my entertainment. Maybe I just want to be entertained.

Today’s consumer in inundated with advertising, with the average city dweller being exposed to over 3000ads per day. Do we really need more advertising imbedded into our chosen content?

One of the strongest backlashes to product placement was when product placement began in the print media, magazines have always had a strict advertising/editorial divide.

The concern with the shifting morals of the print media is that advertorial style, ‘editor recommend…’ pages with products such as beauty creams and holiday destinations will be taken as read by the consumer. Even though often the top recommendation is not the most superior product, but has been given that status because the editor’s friend works for such-and-such cosmetics company and so they’ve just thrown that product in as a favour – it’s dishonest and misleading.

But its when you find yourself wondering why you are being forced to stare at a particular vacuum cleaning brand in the middle of a movie that you have to wonder where we should start drawing the line.

How much product placement is too much product placement?

We are concerned that our lives could turn into one big sales pitch.

If you want to engage with your consumer, stop annoying them and just tell them about your product… If your product is so good and so amazing that you feel it needs to be in such-and-such a film so that your consumer can understand where it fits into their lives, people aren’t that stupid! If it’s a good product they’ll pick it up and they’ll understand how it can be integrated into their lifestyle, and how they can use it, and how they can make it work for them.

You don’t need to trick them into the product – just be honest about it!

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