Real Housewives is a product placement paradise. But fans say the series recently went too far.
I spoke with Angelica Florio at Vox for this story:
“Real Housewives is a product placement paradise. But fans say the series recently went too far.”
Below is a brief extract from the article. Please visit Vox to read the full story here.
“As upsetting as it may be to feel that advertisers subliminally promote their products, the reaction to RHONY proves that viewers still don’t want to sit through overt promotions. Mara Einstein, the author of Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing, and the Covert World of the Digital Sell, explained, “The whole point of brand integration is to not interrupted the flow of the content, and this has done exactly the opposite.” Basically, the bad acting in The Real Housewives simply made the branded ad seem poorly executed.
From an advertiser’s standpoint, branded content, native advertising, brand integrations, and product placement should slip silently into consumers’ psyches. But are audiences actually okay with being constantly sold to?”
“It’s up to consumers to decide whether advertisements slipping into their entertainment is okay with them, because audience numbers and dollars matter. Then again, in a world that’s overwhelmingly inundated with sponsored content, what happened in “Tears of a Clown” could only continue. As Einstein said, “When we used to go to the movies and they first started putting ads on before the movie started, people used to throw popcorn at the screens because they were like ‘I just spent $10 to see a movie; I didn’t pay to watch a bunch of ads.’””