Covert Advertising at BBC

[Teddy Bear]

Given that the BBC's mandate requires impartiality and fairness in its reporting, but the BBC pursues its own agenda, as demonstrated by its sometimes extreme bias, it's hardly surprising that corruption of other kinds will be endemic.

How to get ahead in advertising at the BBC
Jonathan Calvert and Gareth Walsh

COMPANIES are paying fees of up to £40,000 to advertise their products covertly on BBC programmes, often in breach of the corporation’s rules.

At least 50 cases have been identified where top brands have bought favourable exposure on BBC television by paying specialist agents.

The practice, known as product placement, is so widespread that some leading BBC dramas and lifestyle programmes depend on free gifts.

Examples range from eight different brands on the current series of Spooks, the hit BBC1 drama, to a Volkswagen Sharan driven by James Nesbitt in Murphy’s Law. An agent boasted that the value of the car’s appearance was equal to a £30,800 commercial break.

Reporters posing as businessmen seeking exposure for a new alcoholic drink approached agents and BBC production companies. They found:

The producer of a new 12-part cookery programme for BBC2 was willing to promote the drink on air in return for free accommodation and travel.

The head of props for Hotel Babylon, a new drama starring Tamzin Outhwaite, also promised to give the drink an eye-catching position in bar scenes, contravening the BBC’s editorial guidelines.

Programme makers working on shows for the BBC give guarantees that specific products will appear in shot.

The licence fee payer is the loser from the multi-million-pound trade. By maintaining the fiction that “brand placement” agencies are no more than tradesmen supplying props, the BBC can fend off pressure to sell conventional advertising. But for relatively paltry benefits in kind it hands over promotional slots worth thousands of pounds.

Some product placement agencies influence editorial content. An agent persuaded the BBC to use a Sony PlayStation game on the mystery guest slot of A Question of Sport. It featured Lawrence Dallaglio.

The BBC editorial guidelines state there should be no product placement but do allow the use of some brand names to convey realism. In “rare cases” these can be provided free of charge.

In fact this clause has been exploited to spawn an industry of product placement agencies, although the BBC does not gain a direct cash benefit.

Placement with stars is most prized: Ricky Gervais holds a Benjys coffee cup in Extras on BBC2 and Robert Lindsay clutches a bottle of Sol beer in My Family, a BBC1 comedy.

A new prime-time BBC2 series, The Hairy Bikers’ Cookbook, has become a target for the placement agencies. The reporters spoke to the programme’s maker offering to pay its travel and accommodation costs on location.

In return they asked that our fictitious drink — a Mexican beer called Reds — was shown on the programme. John Stroud, managing director of Big Bear Films, said: “I don’t see a problem with that.”

Malcolm Holt, the prop master for Hotel Babylon, was also happy to support the product. “I can do you two or three bottles on the bar — prominent, all the time,” he said.

The BBC said that it would investigate the allegations.