DCS- Product placement- good or bad?

As of the 28^th February this year, product placement will now be allowed in the UK. This means that brand can pay to have their products featured on a television or radio programme. Obviously, as with every from of advertising there are a set of rules which coincide with this, which can be found at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/commercial-references-television/. So the question here is , is this a good thing or a bad thing that it has been allowed in the UK? And will it lead to certain brands dominating the market?

Well the first piece of product placement was on “This Morning” and it was by Nescafe, it signed a £100,000 deal to feature its Dolce Gusto coffee machine for 3 months in the kitchen area. Now having watched the clip I don’t think it’s actually too obvious that it has been placed there on purpose. Being honest, I didn’t know it was by Nescafe either it just looked like a normal coffee machine that could have been bought from Asda. Now if all product placement is going to be this subtle is it really going to be a problem? Well I don’t think so because if you think about it,  in everything we watch films, soaps and even documentaries there are products being used , so what’s the difference if a brand has paid to have that product there?  No I don’t think there is going to be much difference.

However if we think about the fact that certain brand may try to dominate the market through the use of product placement then it’s a different story.  For a strong brand such as Cadburys then product placement can simply reinforce brand awareness and subtly target their audience in ways they feel necessary. However, a less well-known brand may struggle with using product placement successfully because they may not be able to afford to compete with stronger brands to reach their target audience.

I think that product placement has good points and potential bad points, but I think it is definitely something to monitor and watch over the first few months of use, to see if it can achieve anything for specific brands. 

References:

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/commercial-references-television/.

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/advertising/nescaf%C3%A9s-dolce-gusto-first-product-placement-advertiser/3023909.article