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February 11, 2005
The FTC Caves in to Advertisers & Broadcasters on Product Placement
Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission rejected Commercial Alert’s request for disclosure of product placement on television.
The FTC agreed with us that “there may be instances in which the line between advertising and programming may be blurred.” Even so, they dismissed the idea that product placement causes "consumer injury," even though, for example, product placement of junk food is commonplace on TV, and that American children are suffering from an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Essentially, the FTC has taken the position that companies may broadcast undisclosed commercial propaganda on airwaves that we the people own, and that are supposed to be operated for our benefit.
This is an outrage. We deserve an FTC that will stop the dishonest practices of the advertising industry, and stand up for the health of our children.
You can help by telling your Members of Congress to support the Parents' Bill of Rights, a set of nine legislative proposals to restore to parents some control over the commercial influences on their children's lives. Click here to send emails: http://actionstudio.org/?go=1201. The congressional switchboard phone is 202-225-3121.
One important part of the Parents' Bill of Rights is the Product Placement Disclosure Act, which would require clear and conspicuous disclosure of product placement on TV, movies, videos and video games. (For those of you who contacted your Members of Congress about the Parents' Bill of Rights, please do so again. A new Congress began this year, and that means we need you to send new emails and make new phone calls.)
You can also multiply our efforts by sharing this information with your friends, family, neighbors and colleagues.
The FTC wrote to us: "When the Commission considers whether an advertisement directed to children is deceptive, it examines the ad from the standpoint of an ordinary child. If objective claims about a product's attributes were made through product placement in programming directed to children, the Commission would consider whether the claims made would deceive an ordinary child. If no objective claims are made for the product, then there is no claim as to which greater credence could be given; therefore, even from an ordinary child's perspective, consumer injury from an undisclosed product placement seems unlikely."
The FTC's reasoning is based on the antiquated notion that advertising persuades only through objective claims, not images. That argument may have been somewhat true seventy years ago, but is certainly wrong today. Advertisers use product placement precisely because children (and adults) generally do put "greater credence" on product placements for Coca-Cola on American Idol than they do for regular 30-second ads for Coca-Cola.
As you might expect, a recent study in the British medical journal Lancet confirmed that product placement and product viewing are powerful negative influences on teens. It found that "viewing smoking in movies strongly predicts whether or not adolescents initiate smoking, and the effect increases significantly with greater exposure. Adolescents who viewed the most smoking in movies were almost three times more likely to initiate smoking than those with the least amount of exposure."
The Institute of Medicine understood the harmful effects of product placement on children when it recommended last year that "the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services should convene a national conference to develop guidelines for the advertising and marketing of foods, beverages and sedentary entertainment directed at children and youth with attention to product placement, promotion, and content."
Here are links to articles in the Washington Post, New York Times and Advertising Age about yesterday's FTC decision.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15671-2005Feb10.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/business/media/11adde.html
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=44303
Posted by Gary Ruskin at February 11, 2005 12:11 AM
Comments
I wish my members of Congress weren't so lazy and pathetic. I hope some of you who have better representatives will barrage them with phone calls and letters. Let's strike while the iron is hot. Someone in DC should care enough to introduce the Product Placement Disclosure Act asap.
Posted by: Marnie at February 11, 2005 11:17 AM
Get grip on reality and take some personal responsibility.
The "placement" of junk food in movies and TV programs is not causing our children to be obese.
AND, added the subtext "advertisement" while our hero eats a Big Mac won't affect our children either.
The lack of parental responsibility, control and training is the problem.
Now, if you want junk food and sodas out of schools or at least balanced by healthy alternatives I will jump on the bandwagon.
Posted by: Wayne Schaffnit at February 11, 2005 11:58 AM
I think most people who watch television on a regular basis realize that product placement exists. However, I do believe there should be some sort of disclosure...at the end of the show, in the credits. In this way, people can at least see this disclosure. Also, the broadcast networks should, at the very least, keep the disclosure on the screen for 15 seconds.
Posted by: Ken M. McNatt at February 11, 2005 06:00 PM
I always forget that movies or tv have paid product placement. Certain products will be there anyway, but I would like to know who is paying--it feels manipulative to me if it is secret. I don't know why the companies are opposed to it--I think that it will make people think more about the product and where they saw it in the show.
Posted by: michele at February 13, 2005 06:03 PM
I have a good solution toward cleaning up Congress and getting rid of special interest legislation, campaign bribery and lobbying. This thought came to me one day while reading about yet another professional athlete who was being given millions of dollars to play baseball. Suddenly it came to me, why don't we treat congressmen like professional athletes and pay them accordingly. Here's how it works. We raise the salary of congressmen to say ten million dollars a year. This sounds like a lot, but if you take a look at the federal budget, it works out to peanuts. Contributions/gifts, lobbying of any kind involving money or a free lunch is absolutely forbidden. To run for reelection the congressman/woman must finance his/her own campaign. It would be up to them how much they want to waste to get reelected. Because the job now is well-paid there would be no shortage of qualified, intelligent people interested in running for office and financing their own campaigns. I'd be interested in hearing any criticism relative to the downside to this.
Posted by: MDayne at February 22, 2005 09:28 AM
How unfortunate. As DVRs cripple the television ad industry, advertisers are shifting a lot of those dollars to television program product placement, and are subsequently undermining disclosure laws the FCC has enforced (albeit not perfectly) for decades. Our children will pay the ultimate price for this over the next couple of decades.
Posted by: Jud Valeski at February 24, 2005 11:04 AM
Introduce legislation to charge all media and advertisers for use of the public airways, based on annual profit, and pay the collections to the public, not the government, like the Green Bay Packers is a city-owned team paying dividends to the city residents, instead of a corporation.
Also, to MDAyne who wrote above, pay minimum wages to all public servants and politicians and select politicians from the jury pool.
Posted by: Norma at February 24, 2005 11:32 AM
In response to Wayne's comment from 02/11/05, I say this: one cannot beg the issue of personal responsibility when the information to make an informed choice is not as readily and conveniently available as the food that these corporations sell and market. For example, the MacDonald's corporation in 1999 spent in excess of $1.2 billion in advertising. It says that it posts nutritional information on it's products on the internet; yet, in 2000, only 50% of American households had access; the majority of those who don't are in the lower half socioeconomically; just those people to whom their marketing most affects. The personal responibility argument furthur deterioates when one includes children to the mix, who are inherently less informed, less mature, and more prone to the influences of marketing than adults.
The lack of parental responsibility, control and training is NOT the only problem; the sophistication and unconscious manipulation of the marketing techniques employed by these food corporations bear responsibility as well.
That Big Mac absolutely does affect our children, even if most of us are unaware of it; THAT'S the power of marketing.
Posted by: nikki monacelli at March 8, 2005 12:02 AM
