Product Placement: In or Out?

This is an exerpt from an article written by Alex Gulland of OgilvyEntertainment, about product placement becoming a valuable practice vs. the old school rantings of Andy Burnham.

Burnham’s prudish Victorian approach had the dangerous possibility of forcing us into a world where every product on television has to look ‘Vanilla’ so as not to offend or influence the viewers’ delicate sensibilities.

Oh, I feel I am going all Charlotte Bronte now!

Mr. Burnham was quoted as saying ‘As a viewer, I don’t want to feel the script has been written by the commercial marketing director”–Yikes! What strange world does Mr Burnham inhabit? A world where commercial directors can actually write scripts?

A couple of things that Mr. Burnham failed to take into consideration is that brands are part of everyday life, therefore audiences expect to see them in television shows.

Read the rest of the article here.