Product Placement In Media

Introduction

The view of products in media has taken many forms with the likes of advertising being a form of direct influence for consumers to sell products. One of these forms is at the heart of this assignment, that is product placement. The technological advancement of the 21st century has seen changes in the way product placement works in media with the internet slowly becoming a common place for product placement along with being a part of it traditional roots in film and television.

Product placement has its roots imbedded in media with its first sighting being in literature in works by writers such as Charles Dickens having mentions to known brands of the time (Newell, Salmon and Chang 2006, p. 579), the first recorded sightings of

The section after this will focus on the types of product placement seen in media today with this section looking at the types more related to film and TV and types more so related to the internet. After this examples of how these types of product placement have been applied in the mediums provided will be given, once again separate examples will be given for both the traditional methods and the new. Finally, this assignment will offer up some criticisms of product placement and what its place is in media today, this will then lead to a

There are many ways to show a product on screen but there are three clearly stated types: verbal reference, active placement and passive placement. This section will look at these three and how their represented in TV, film and new media.

To begin with verbal reference, it is when a product is “openly discussed in the works” (Kramolis and Drabkova 2012, p. 2) of the programme its featured in meaning it’s part of the scripted interaction between a character and the audience as shown in both Hackley, Tiwsakul, and Preuss and TAM Ireland’s definitions from the earlier section (see above). Verbal reference is usually done when the product is not seen and “… must be appropriate and fit with the scene” (Thinkbox.tv 2015) meaning that, in film and television at least, verbal reference of products is done within the guideline of the story or script.

This is slightly different to how it’s done on the internet. As will be seen in the applied section of this assignment (see below) internet celebrities introduce a “specific product or service as if “by the way” of what he or she is really presenting in the film” (Letki 2016) meaning that they naturally place it within the context of their