The New York Times ran a story yesterday about a product placement relationship between book publisher Perseus and Procter & Gamble's Cover Girl brand of cosmetics. Apparently, one consumer watchdog group, Commercial Alert, was none to happy about the relationship. The group sent an email to 305 editors yesterday asking them not to review the book called "Cathy's Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233," and to treat it like an advertisement instead of a novel. Just to be clear here, today's New York Post reports that no money exchanged hands between the book publisher and P&G, but the book's authors did agree to alter the writing to mention Cover Girl's lip gloss by name. In exchange for the mention, P&G agreed to promote the novel on its Beinggirl teen web site, which I posted about in the past. In today's blurred world of branded entertainment you can't tell me this is the first teen targeted novel that featured product placements. After all this is a work of fiction, not some book about American history. Personally, I don't see what the big deal is considering Gen Y is constantly bombarded with marketing messages left and right. I am just glad to see that they are still reading quite frankly given of all of the other media distractions around them.
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