"The Ethics of Product Placement"

While trying to assess the negative aspects of product placement I found this interesting article written by a professor of Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, Ed Wasserman. It's a critical assessment of the ethical issues connected with product placement.

Wasserman  divides the product placement issue into three categories:

1. Deceptiveness
2. Expressive integrity
3. Trust

The idea of deception is based on the premise that someone is lying to pursue their agenda. Product placement however, does not do that. Advertisement in its true meaning sometimes does, but product placement does not. Wasserman gives an example of this saying:  The character isn't kidding about enjoying the Diet Coke and isn't falsely driving the BMW." Based on the analysis deception does not seem to be a major problem. According to Wasserman the only deceptiveness issue is that the consumer or viewer is being targeted under false pretenses. In American television there is no alert signaling product placement, thus the viewer usually does not know that they are a subject of selling products. While viewing advertisements we basically trained ourselves to put our shields up in order not to be manipulated by the power of the ads but while watching a show with products being displayed as a natural part of the setting our shields are down. 


On the other hand we learn how to deal with these sort of things continuously, the more we are exposed to products the more we know how to deal with it. Therefore in this sense product placement is not as much of an evil force as it's made up to be. After all, we are intelligent beings and media are an integral part of our lives and we ourselves need to learn how to filter them and consume them.


The second issue Wasserman presents is expressive integrity. According to him the pressure that the creative minds behind films and TV are under lowers their level of creativity and limits them to follow the guidelines made by the people who paid them to expose their merchandise. The Mad Men situation I talked about previously is an clear example of this kind of limitation the TV makers are subjected to. Because of the demanded increase of product placement Matthew Weiner has to compromise the quality of the plot and the whole show. 


Wasserman also presents a counter argument to this from the protagonists of product placement. According to them the fact that characters on TV shows use real products, drink real beverages, order pizza from real restaurants makes the whole plot more believable for the viewers. Viewers can easily identify with the characters if they look more like regular people. "...when we see characters in a supposedly realistic film reaching for a bottle of beer labeled, “Beer,” we disbelieve the authenticity of the scene," Wasserman says. I essentially agree with this, commercial setting of a TV show will much more authentically resemble a commercial world.


The third and most crucial issue Wasserman touches is trust. Essentially he argues that with more product placement on TV the trust level of the viewers is reduced. The viewers no longer know whether the TV shows are made for the purpose of telling a story, entertainment or as an artistic creative outlet or if they are made solely for the purpose of selling products and making money. 


The article is a very interesting analysis of the ethical problems of product placement and I recommend reading it. For all those who are interested to read it here is a link.