The article points out that US programmes with product placement can be shown in the UK (eg Jack Bauer's Ford vehicles in 24, which I didn't notice) but I've seen brand names blurred out on programmes like American Idol, so I'm a little confused about that.

Nonetheless, I don't watch much tv and hate adverts with a passion, so I imagine I'd be highly irritated if I spotted overt product placement within tv programmes.

It has got me thinking of how many American brand names I was familiar with when I was younger (such as Twinkies, Hershey's) that I could only have become aware of through seeing them on tv. Do people pick up on British brands in the same way - McVities digestive biscuits, Cadbury's or jaffa cakes?!

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Children are already exposed to product placement via movies. My daughter is interested in film making, and we make a bit of a game (not in the cinema, you'll be pleased to hear) of spotting it, calling out "Gratuitous lingering shot on coffee cup" or "This watch would make even you look cool!" and, in fact, I suspect they're so media-savvy that it devalues brands in their eyes.  They've been taught since they were small that people try to sell them things by promising they'll make them happy, popular or cool, and this is really just an extension of that.

However, my children are a bit older, and, well, have a cynic like me for a mum. Family based media training isn't universal, and schools don't really cover it directly either, though there are plenty of chances to bring it up, and no child I've worked with is left in any doubt what advertisements are for. As ever, it's the children sat in front of a screen without adult supervision, commentary or discussion who are most at risk. There are strict rules about what can be advertised to children and how, and I firmly believe that any form of product placement before or after the watershed should have to abide by these.

I always remembered it most in bond films. fleming was way ahead of his time in writing product placement into his books, although he was using it as a shorthand for his character's "sophisitication". But the films rapidly turned that into a dollar twisting exercise.

After all, whenver a car crashes in any film, look which advertising hoarding it's under. Bond started that.

keep to the Fen Causeway

I don't know - mainly because I'm not convinced that it actually works, unless it's sufficiently gratuitous to catch and hold your attention violently. In which case it should be pruned from the film on purely artistic grounds.

TV ads, however advertising men may flatter themselves, do not work through subtlety. As anybody who has spent an evening flipping channels can attest, they work by the principle of saturation bombing and have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

Is it illegal in England? Really?

Talk about cultural dissonance :)

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude