Last month one of the UK's top public networks, Channel 4, announced that it would be airing a new show. Pretty standard, right? Wrong! The show includes a partnership with New Look, a British clothing retailer where the show is essentially branded by the business. The plot of the show is similar to many other reality/competition type shows where contestants are eliminated while completing challenges en route to a prize. Channel 4's new broadcast will be based around seeking out young fashionistas and rewarding them with....... a job at New Look.
As for the product placement specs, according to The Guardian much of the clothing featured in the style competitions will be made by New Look, the brand will be prominently placed and the show (obviously) will be partially funded by New Look.
Anyone who knows me knows that I literally could not care less about fashion, so needless to say I'm moving towards a bigger point here. That being, isn't this just a huge commercial? New Look is essentially buying up a half hour or hour of airtime weekly in order to hock their clothing and try to fool people into thinking it's natural. Sounds very similar to other companies buying up 45 seconds twice a week to do the same. From the sounds of it, despite the fact that it will be a "competition", everything leads back to New Look. There can't be serious consideration about the clothing because only part of the market is displayed. One also can't take the opinions of those on the show seriously because the company essentially controls their ability to stay on the show. Lastly, the reward for winning puts the company on a pedestal yet again. This is a bit too much for me to handle. I find it hard to believe that this type of shenanigans is going on on a huge publicly owned network.
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