We can’t run away from the ethical debates in marketing

Rory Sutherland

The ethics of negative product placement in advertising is just one of the scenarios flagged up in this article about the moral minefield that marketers have to navigate.

We can't run away from the ethical debates in marketing

Rory Sutherland

A few of us were discussing the newly liberalised product placement regulations, and began musing on the ethics of negative product placement – whereby you would pay broadcasters to feature your competitors' products being used by deeply unattractive characters. So that next raid on a crack den in The Bill might show an array of P&G cleaning products on a shelf.

Interestingly enough, only days later a real instance of this arose. In the recent film The Invention of Lying,set in a world where...

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