Whether the development of product placement in China is irregular or illegal is difficult to define

Product placement, right? Wrong?

Recently, the "Golden Wedding 2" advertising incident escalated again. After Anhui Satellite TV and Jiangsu Satellite TV said they would delete product placement advertisements in the drama, Jiangxi Satellite TV also announced that it would join the Scissorhands camp. So far, three of the four satellite stations that broadcast the first round have indicated that they will remove product placement ads.

Let's look at another piece of news. Zhao Benshan's Spring Festival Gala skit product placement in the past two years has caused controversy from many parties. A staff member of Benshan Media, who declined to be named, said that Zhao Benshan strived to no longer have product placement advertisements in his sketches for the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Rabbit……

Recently, TV advertising, especially product placement advertising, has become a hot topic in the cultural field. Among various discussions in the media and netizens, the tone of criticism dominates. Some netizens said that China people pay to watch advertisements. Some say that product placement blasphemes the connotation of the film and hurts the feelings of the audience. However, product placement is a trend in the development of the world's media and advertising industry. Faced with controversy and the embarrassing situation of product placement, we can't help but ask, what happened to product placement?  

In fact, product placement is no longer a strange thing in China TV and movies. Product placement began to emerge in China in the 1990s. The well-known indoor sitcom "Story of the Editorial Department" not only made it popular with a group of stars such as Ge You and Lu Liping, but the prop Bailong Mineral Spring Pot in the play was also known to children and old people for a while. In foreign countries, product placement advertising has long matured. In many European and American blockbusters, we are not unfamiliar with product placement.

If traditional hard advertising is compared to a stormy storm, product placement advertising is a bit like the one described in Du Fu's poem, sneaking into the night with the wind and moistening things silently. Good product placement can not only bring huge profits to advertisers and producers, but also become an important factor or indispensable prop in promoting the plot and the emotional development of characters.

However, at present, my country's product placement advertising still faces many problems of irregular development due to factors such as lack of industry standards and mismanagement.

First of all, it is difficult to define whether product placement advertising is illegal. Data shows that the market size of pay TV placement advertising in China will reach US$31 million in 2010. However, regrettably, in the face of the explosive growth of product placement, my country has deficiencies in legislation, supervision, taxation, etc. At present, no relevant functional department has been able to accurately assess the legality and rationality of product placement, and the Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China does not include this new form of advertising. In other words, product placement advertising is deviating from existing laws and regulations.

Secondly, due to the difficulty of definition, which has led to a gap in supervision and management, a series of shortcomings have arisen in the operation of product placement advertising. The hidden but not announced has turned into publicity but not hidden, which affects the transmission of product information; limited by film and television works, the connotation of advertising products is insufficient; the frequency of advertising is too dense, and the audience is bored; the creative power is weak and the satisfaction of advertising effects is poor……

Faced with these shortcomings and doubts from all parties, at the beginning of this year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television stated that it would strengthen research on new issues such as product placement and propose normative policies as soon as possible. The author believes that regulating product placement, a thing that is in a management vacuum, involves many aspects, such as the price of product placement, the number of product placement, and the evaluation of the effect of product placement.

Due to the limitations of expression forms, product placement advertising has more complex situations waiting to be regulated. Because when any new carrier appears, it is also the time when lawbreakers are most likely to take advantage of loopholes. For example, in the United States, product placement advertising of tobacco once circumvented the ban on tobacco advertising in film and television, and tobacco appearing in film and television works did not warn that smoking was harmful to health. In 1991, the U.S. product placement marketing industry self-regulated, and the tobacco industry agreed to stop film product placement, but many tobacco products are still implanted in movies and television. In recent years, some foreign social organizations have continuously criticized product placement advertisements for containing controversial products such as alcohol and guns. It can be seen that there are still many marginal goals that can be used to use product placement advertising, and the road to supervision is not smooth. Therefore, advertisers, broadcasters and viewers are waiting for this reassurance to regulate product placement.

In Western countries, product placement advertising is regarded as marketing aesthetics. Its magic weapon is artistic conception. While pursuing material value, it also attaches great importance to aesthetic taste, humanistic connotation and inner resonance with consumers. The author believes that only by truly integrating cultural connotations into artistic expression can we achieve the effect of moistening things silently, and only by strengthening and standardizing their management can we promote the advertising market to a healthy and orderly development track.