Ethics of Product Placement: a Threat to Ethic or a Chance for Marketing?
Ethics of product placement: A threat to ethic or a chance for marketing?
Introduction
Marketing communication, which plays an important role in selling products, is undoubtedly shaping audience attitude within its numerous tools.
Marketing communication is divided into separate elements: promotion sponsorship, public relations and advertising .All of these could be carriers of product placement. However, by using some of these elements to send message to audience, some ethic issues may occur.
In this report, based on the definition of product placement , the theories of business ethic will be used to give the discussion of the ethic issues .There are four arguable points in the marketing communication--- the products’ nature, whether the advertisements are telling the truth , the audience of targeting and the way of expressing the message to audience. During the discussion of these four processes, recent examples will be used to illustrate the ethic issues.
The definition and the recent development of product placement
As the result of increasing commercial needs, a diversity of methods are used in nowadays marketing communication. In the past, audience might clearly know that what has happened when they received the message. Directly promotion commercial could be seen in these traditional media: newspapers, magazines, on TV or radio (Shimp T A,2010) .Sometimes we also notice other new media such as website pop-up advertisements .Gradually a new type of “hidden” promotion is rising .In that type of promotion we accept the message without realizing it is a commercial. In the latest film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1,when the three wizards “landed” on London city center, Samsung billboards and a Barclays ' logo was suddenly appeared in audience’s field of vision for 2 to 3 seconds----that is so called “product placement”
Product placement is a communication tool that put the commercial insertions into culture vehicles. (Lehu J M, 2007). Any
Introduction
Marketing communication, which plays an important role in selling products, is undoubtedly shaping audience attitude within its numerous tools.
Marketing communication is divided into separate elements: promotion sponsorship, public relations and advertising .All of these could be carriers of product placement. However, by using some of these elements to send message to audience, some ethic issues may occur.
In this report, based on the definition of product placement , the theories of business ethic will be used to give the discussion of the ethic issues .There are four arguable points in the marketing communication--- the products’ nature, whether the advertisements are telling the truth , the audience of targeting and the way of expressing the message to audience. During the discussion of these four processes, recent examples will be used to illustrate the ethic issues.
The definition and the recent development of product placement
As the result of increasing commercial needs, a diversity of methods are used in nowadays marketing communication. In the past, audience might clearly know that what has happened when they received the message. Directly promotion commercial could be seen in these traditional media: newspapers, magazines, on TV or radio (Shimp T A,2010) .Sometimes we also notice other new media such as website pop-up advertisements .Gradually a new type of “hidden” promotion is rising .In that type of promotion we accept the message without realizing it is a commercial. In the latest film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1,when the three wizards “landed” on London city center, Samsung billboards and a Barclays ' logo was suddenly appeared in audience’s field of vision for 2 to 3 seconds----that is so called “product placement”
Product placement is a communication tool that put the commercial insertions into culture vehicles. (Lehu J M, 2007). Any
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