Posted on May 9, 2019 at 4:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
We wouldn’t call it distracting, necessarily, but yep, we notice product placements in TV shows and movies.
Another area in which books are superior to the screen, one might think. (And duh, we at Fussy would never argue against the supremacy of literature.)
So it was with great surprise that we discovered Vox’s article on the history of product placement in literature — and the suggestion that its failure actually reflects troublingly on novels.
Specifically:
In 2001, books were a medium distributed widely enough that marketers thought it was worth their while to try to advertise in them — and considered special enough that many in the industry considered product placement to be an abhorrent corruption of the form.
In 2019, literature is no longer a medium that industry celebrities rush to defend whenever the idea of product placement creeps forward. And the novel’s reach is so limited that the idea of product placement doesn’t come up all that often anyway.
Read about the few notable instances of paid product placement in literature — and the reaction to them — in Vox.
Categories: Today in Books