Product companies and ad agencies have become adept in recent years at product placement: strategically placing ads or buying space—in movies, TV shows, comic books, and most recently video games, blogs, and music videos—so products appear as part of a story’s set environment (see “Examining Ethics: Brand Integration, Everywhere”). For example, in 2009, Starbucks became a naming sponsor of MSNBC’s show Morning Joe—which now includes “Brewed by Starbucks” in its logo. In 2013, the Superman movie Man of Steel had the most product placements ever for a film, with 100-plus marketing partners in deals worth $160 million, including those with Hardee’s, Gillette, Sears, Nikon, Nokia, 7-Eleven, IHOP, and the National Guard.

For many critics, product placement has gotten out of hand. What started out as subtle appearances in realistic settings—like Reese’s Pieces in the 1982 movie E.T.—has turned into Coca-Cola being almost an honorary “cast member” on Fox’s American Idol set. The practice is now so pronounced that it was a subject of Hollywood parody in the 2006 film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, starring Will Ferrell.

In 2005, watchdog organization Commercial Alert asked both the FTC and the FCC to mandate that consumers be warned about product placement on television. The FTC rejected the petition, whereas the FCC proposed product placement rules but had not approved them by 2013. In contrast, the European Union recently approved product placement for television but requires programs to alert viewers of such paid placements. In Britain, for example, the letter “P” must appear in the corner of the screen at commercial breaks and at the beginning and end of a show to signal product placements.²²