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Britain bans product placement on TV shows

June 11th, 2008 by Scott Marks

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When was the earliest example of product-en-scene? There had to have been something before Billy Wilder placed the box of Ivory Snow Flakes on the store shelf between Phyllis and Walter in Double Indemnity (1944). Perhaps Wilder was vamping on soap companies, then famous for sponsoring radio dramas, by inserting a box in his anything but sudsy film noir.

Or was Wilder attempting to bring an audience impacted by the horrors of World War II a little closer to the realities of everyday living?

The man who turned product placement into an art form was Frank Tashlin. In 1949, the former Termite Terrace animator, current Harpo Marx gag man and future Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis auteur de choix wrote, and presumably had a hand in the direction of, the rooftop climax to Love Happy (1949). With the sardine can diamonds safely secured in his trenchcoat, Harpo frolics through a glorious studio mock up of a Manhattan rooftop complete with enormous glowing signs and animated billboards all screaming brand names. Harpo’s horseplay lands him atop the Mobil Oil’s emblematic “Flying Red Horse” and the neon steed flashes him to safety.

In his live action features, Tashlin’s employment of merchandise and trademarks brought movies up to date and into the modern world he was clearly lampooning. You would no longer see a character pick up a pack of Marlboro’s with a piece of electrical tape strategically positioned over the product logo. When Tuttle’s Department Store turns on Jerry Lewis in Who’s Minding the Store?, it isn’t simply a series of animated appliances waging war, but a consumerist mentality gone haywire.

After Tash it was all about the numbers as shrewd studio marketing teams began descended on corporations to help pay the bills. It’s virtually impossible to find a contemporary American film from the 1980s that doesn’t have a USA Today box lurking somewhere in the corner of one of its frames.

The advent of the VCR caused torrents of flopsweat to flood Madison Avenue boardrooms. Viewers now had the option to scan through their precious pitches leaving only subliminal traces of their wares. TiVo obliterates commercials in record time, so now more than ever product placement is essential to advertisers and networks alike.

There must be a different mindset overseas because according to Variety, in his first big policy speech on broadcasting, the U.K.’s media minister Andy Burnham, secretary of state at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport since January, indicated that he would not accept the European Union directive allowing product placement on U.K. TV.

Burnham fears that crass commercial plug-ins would somehow “contaminate” the exalted status of British TV. He added, “As a viewer, I don’t want to feel the script has been written by the commercial marketing director.” Burnham continued: “British programming has an integrity that is revered around the world and I don’t think we should put that hard-won reputation up for sale.”

Get over yourself. The idiot box was created to sell douche powder and effervescent denture cleaners and high class telly is an oxymoron. That goes double for prim, acting-driven and routinely unfunny British TV. Better a word from out sponsor rather than Benny Hill is what I always say.

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