Monday 14 September 2009

Product Debasement

There are concerns in some quarters that the decision by The Department of Culture to allow product placement on commercially produced programmes in the UK will plunge broadcasting standards down to a new low. The Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw is proposing a three month consultation before finally confirming the lifting of the current ban on product placement in a bid to allay these concerns.

There could however be some exciting new developments resulting from product placement. It is believed that edgy teenage dramas such as Skins and the Inbetweeners will allow the manufacturers of condoms, sex toys and 'lubricants' strategically to 'place their products' as and when appropriate. It is also thought that major cocaine, heroin and marijuana dealers will pay producers big money to show drugs as being freely available - and even possibly good - for young people. Arms manufacturers hope crime dramas will showcase their hardware, allowing a certain make of gun or of knife to be waved freely around in a threatening manner, with, say, the hero always carrying the more expensive, more refined model.

Commercial broadcasters and advertisers claimed today that ordinary viewers had nothing to fear from seeing product placement on their favorite programmes, since it would not generate anything out of the ordinary. Said one: "What's weird about seeing people in the Rover's Return or Queen Vic sipping insipid keg beers and piss-poor lagers before diving into their pot noodles and pork scratchings? And what is the problem with DCI Jane Tennyson washing down her Nurofen Plus with half a litre of Smirnoff? It's kind of what you'd expect anyway."

"The sort of people who watch programmes containing product placement will feel very much at home with the trash that producers will be placing. And let's face it, there could not be anything more naff and degenerate on television right now than mainstream television adverts... like that one with an irritating nodding dog or that directory enquiries one with those pathetic mustachioed men. Not to mention those ghastly sponsorship announcements at the beginnings and the ends of programmes. So can standards on commercial television really get much worse? Somehow I think not."

22 comments:

  1. Advertising is simply the most degenerate form of art

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  2. This government takes it up the ass from pretty well every other corporate entity in the UK, so why not advertisers?
    Never in the field of corporate bum-licking have so few (corporations) owed so much to so few (government ministers).

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  3. Advertising means jobs, wealth generation, taxes.
    Wanna kill it?

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  4. Yes... we all wanna kill it.

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  5. They say that people won't care or notice that all the cars in a given show are the same make, and won't register that coke that the hero is drinking.
    In that case, why bother? What is the point of advertising if people don't see the brand

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  6. It's supposed to be a drip drip subliminal perception and thus acceptance of certain products in certain contexts, one supposes.
    Rather malign and insidious

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  7. If you accept advertising per se then why not accept it when the products are advertised in a context?
    Or is it invading the sacred cows such as Coronation Street?

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  8. Adverts are utterly gruesome - derivative and vacuous. More an attempt by advertisers to show off rather than sell the product.
    Putting a well known brandname on a lump of horseshit and broadcasting it on prime time tv would be enough to grab the attention needed to increase sales.
    Advertising is pretentious and self serving (the self being the 'creative self' that is).

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  9. What I really love are the adverts where the account manager is trying to relive his own childhood - as in replaying seventies cartoons like Mary Mungo and Midge to plug some new kind of insurance. All at the expense of the company he/she is supposed to be working for!

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  10. What about the ads where 'the creative' clearly wants everyone to love his funky musical tastes (eg Jane Birkin or Thievery Corporation) and then uses their music as backing for the car ad he is developing?

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  11. The real con that advertisers perpetrate is selling the idea that they can sell a product.

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  12. Salman Dont Rushme14 September 2009 at 18:32

    Sod it. Who cares if they flog some lager or Walkers Crisps on Coronation Street?
    If we ever see the likes of Jeremy Paxman waving his Diet Coke around on Newsnight then we ought to be pissed off.

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  13. Paxman would only ever sell his soul for a pint of John Smith's

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  14. I want to get into advertising.
    They tell me it is very glamorous

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  15. It will be interesting to see whether the advertisers will be able to influence plot lines etc. Presumably they will.
    Who would have thought that so many people in the Rovers Return ate Dairylea Dunkers....?

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  16. Calm down dear, it's only a bit of product placement.

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  17. Oh my god, what a thought, Michael Winner popping up everywhere... The Bill for example... some copper writes off his car and Winner pops up... Calm down Constable...

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  18. As an (ex) member of the Beatles I can happily say that I have enormous respect for Mr Winner and i sincerely believe that were he to appear regularly on day time tv his presence would be much appreciated.
    As the great man says, "Calm down dear, Vorschprung durch technik."
    I just wish that these advertisers could like insert product placement retrospectively into old repeats of Poirot and Jeeves and Wooster.

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  19. Mr. Paul Maccartely, or whatever your real name might be, can I say this to you? There are plans, as we speak, to insert (retrospectively of course) products such as Lidl microwave curries into classic films such as 'Casablanca'
    Example: "Of all the curry houses in all the world you had to walk into mine."
    And Bogart's face will be replaced by the face of one of those chaps from Bombay Billionaire.
    Got that, old boy?

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  20. Has any of you guys heard of realpolitik?
    My gutt friend Tricksy Dicky was very gutt at product placement

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  21. actors are a kind of product placement

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  22. I dear boy cannot place any method actors

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