Consumer Affairs Correspondent Irish Television will officially enter the world of paid-for product placement next month when TV3’s morning chat show presenters start drinking a particular brand of coffee on air as part of a “six-figure” deal. From next month the coffee brand will feature prominently on the Morning Show and Midday and will become the first paid-for product placement on Irish television since the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland revised its advertising code of practice earlier this summer. Under the 12-month deal, worth in excess of €250,000, the brand will sponsor the two programmes and presenters Sybil Mulcahy, Martin King, Colette Fitzpatrick and Elaine Crowley, as well as their panel of guests, will be expected to drink the coffee – or at least pretend to – from heavily branded mugs.
To date all the examples of produce placement which have appeared on Irish television have been imported, mostly from the US, where particular brands of computers, phones, drinks, clothes and footwear are frequently shoe-horned into programmes such as Sex and the City and Glee. Until very recently it was prohibited in domestically produced programming, but the authority was forced to change the rules governing product placement after recognition at European Union level in 2007 that the television advertising goalposts had shifted dramatically.
One of the biggest changes has been the proliferation of digital video recorders which allow viewers to record programmes and then fast-forward through the ads, a technological advance which had significantly threatened many broadcasters’ income from advertising revenue.
Product placement on Irish screens will not be a free-for-all, however. Such placement remains prohibited in children’s programmes and talk and chat shows with more than 20 per cent of news and current affairs content. Broadcasters must include a written announcement before programmes containing product placements and display a logo containing the letters PP before and during programmes. They must also list in the end credits the names of companies that have provided products and services included in a programme.
