UK Legislation Opens Up New Advertising Opportunities – and Issues
The UK Advertising industry is going in for a marked change from the norm. The Government is set to relax its rules that barred brands from being displayed on Television programmes. Television shows and soap operas would now feature characters flaunting some of the prominent brands in their day-to-day lives. This change of stance, which has evoked mixed responses and implications for brands that want visibility, could be doling out a big bag of opportunities for organisations to promote themselves and their products.
The possibilities are enormous for companies and their marketing departments; and the implications would run deep into the story lines and screenplays of TV shows. Once approved, companies can be seen pitching hard for advertising slots not just in between programmes but right into them. Media companies that produce shows in-house would have a lot to benefit from the move as they would have perfect control over which brands are displayed on which shows as well as have a say on how and where these brands are displayed and promoted.
People who should be concerned, however, are the media players who do not produce most of their programmes, as well as companies and advertising agencies that have to get used to the new ground rules. Media firms may lose control over Ads that may be inserted into the programmes and hence may find the ground slipping beneath their feet when it comes to their pull on regular advertising slots.
Advertisers may find a conflict over who controls the placements of brands, as companies could approach the producers directly to have their brands displayed. And companies themselves may not be sure of the practicalities involved in the new concept, the exact returns that they could hope to reap, the amount of viewer attention that they could hope to garner through random display of brands as well as the effectiveness of the exercise, apart from problems related to the degree of control that they could exercise, when compared with regular advertisement slots where the entire time is allotted to the brands in question.
Further, advertisers would also have to make sure that their enthusiasm towards visibility doesn’t turn the viewers off, with programmes turning into virtual showcases of brands and 24 hour advertisements.
