We can't run away from the ethical debates in marketing
Rory Sutherland
A few of us were discussing the newly liberalised product placement regulations, and began musing on the ethics of negative product placement – whereby you would pay broadcasters to feature your competitors' products being used by deeply unattractive characters. So that next raid on a crack den in The Bill might show an array of P&G cleaning products on a shelf.
Interestingly enough, only days later a real instance of this arose. In the recent film The Invention of Lying,set in a world where...