Last year I suggested that the saturation of product placements in movies, television and even news content would inevitably lead to the demise of this over-used marketing tactic.
Now reports show that consumer brand giants like Procter & Gamble and Unilever are cutting their product placements by more than half. While the companies say these are just cyclical timing issues, some experts see evidence of a trend. After all, product placements and other “paid media” are just advertisements pretending to not be advertisements. There more there are, the less they work.
"Consumers feel insulted by placement for the sake of product placement," marketing guru Jeff Greenfield told Brandweek. "When you have a product like soap, [placement] is not going to cause an increase in sales," he said. "This increases brand recognition and increases Internet activity around the brand.”
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- BrandWeek | P&G, Unilever Tuning Out Network Product Placements
- Scatterbox | The inevitable death of product placements.
