Flicking through various television shows I found my self watching Channel 9's program "The Block", a reality television shows that has four teams of two renovating an apartment to go up for auction, the winning team the apartment that sells for the most money.
The presenter together will a real estate expert was inspecting the apartment, only for one of them to remark that, "...They've used the Telstra T-Box that's a great move as they are the way of the future"
I then proceed to make a bet that during the next commercial break the Telstra-Tbox will be advertised and sure enough I was correct. The show was sponsored by the Telstra -Tbox!
This is a prime example of product placement done badly, I almost felt insulted by channel 9.
Channel 9 took the realm of product placement one step further as they "sold" it to the television audience via testimonial from a real estate agent. Testimonials are only ever effective when the audience believes who they are listening to, this is usually why normal testimonial television commercials usually use industry experts or celebrities to sell their product. However, by interweaving product placement with testimonial account whilst at the same time overtly sponsoring the show, Telstra loses all credibility, as does the agent, as well as channel 9 and its television show.
As we have seen time and time again the consumer is too savvy for such attempts of trickery, this is clearly an ineffective way of marketing a new product!
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