In 2014, some British YouTube stars were called out by the British advertising regulators
for not properly declaring sponsored content.
They mentioned the sponsorship in the description,
they said "thanks to the company for making this possible" at the end:
it wasn't like they were trying to hide it, but it wasn't enough.
It had to be clear before you clicked on the video, that it was an advert.
In a world so saturated with advertising: why was that a problem?
Well, British media has some of the strongest product placement laws in the world.
Most of the rest of the planet, though?
They don't really care. And the reason,
as with so many things, goes back to history.
Back in the first years of television,
all Britain had was the BBC from Alexandra Palace. Paid for not by advertising,
but by a yearly tax on anyone who owned a television. And that's still true.
So advertising wasn't, and isn't,
allowed on the BBC. In the United States, though,
they had commercial television right from the start -- and a -- whaa! --
a show's host would regularly interrupt their patter
to give a personal endorsement down the camera for a better brand of umbrella(!)
"Unless you're smoking L&Ms, all you can do is imagine how good they taste."
But in the UK, that sort of thing was seen as horribly tacky.
When commercial TV launched here,
admags, weird half-soap-opera,
half-infomercials, existed for a few years,
but it just wasn't the British way of doing things, darling(!)
So in the 60s, strict rules were laid down: advertising and
content must never collide. No product placement, at all.
Which led to some things that Americans would find very strange:
our version of the Price is Right,
for example, couldn't mention brand names.
You might win a brand new car,
but the announcer would never say what make of car it was.
"A 1.3 hatchback!"
Teleshopping and infomercials existed, and still do,
but they had to be clearly flagged,
on screen with a title, saying what they were.
Were there dodgy dealings going on behind the scenes?
Did some producers get backhanders for making sure
that the heroes of their drama used a certain type of computer?
Almost certainly. But you wouldn't see, for example,
those heroes stopping for lunch at one particular chain restaurant
and emphasising how good the food was.
"This Subway sandwich? So ono."
You know how the American Idol judges all had those big branded cups in front of them?
They had to be blurred out when that series was shown over here.
Other product placements, like those in movies,
or sports broadcasts coming from sponsored arenas, were deemed acceptable,
but the regulators generally took a hard line on entertainment made here in Britain.
That's what the folks who grew up in Britain are used to.
That's what the people making the decisions see as the standard for the country's television.
So as you might imagine,
our advertising rules in general are a bit more restrictive too.
There is a thing called the Advertising Standards Authority who write the Advertising Codes.
Now, the codes are technically voluntary,
but in practice it's as good as the law.
Because few companies want the bad publicity that'll come from breaking it,
no TV channels or newspapers will dare to run ads that break the Codes,
and ad agencies, the people who make the commercials,
don't want to get in trouble either.
Because the alternative is the government starts setting the rules
instead of the advertising industry itself,
and they'll make breaking the Code an actual criminal offence
rather than just something that gets your advert pulled.
Now, the rules have been relaxed recently.
Provided it's flagged up with a tiny symbol at the start of the show,
some commercial TV can now include product placements.
But for advertisers used to the permissiveness of America,
modern-day British TV is still a shock:
adverts can't editorially affect the show, and
they can't talk about how good the product is. Also,
you can't product-place food that's high in sugar, fat or salt,
and there's absolutely no product placement at all within children's programs.
The Advertising Standards Authority lives in the building behind me,
and the Code they write has hundreds of pages of rules governing all sorts of ads.
But there are two very important sections for what we're talking about,
and given the rules I mentioned earlier,
they probably won't surprise you.
Number 1: no matter where they are,
adverts must be clearly identifiable as adverts.
And number 2: you can't advertise unhealthy food to children.
So you might see why the regulators got a bit annoyed at vloggers with teen audiences
selling cookies in the middle of their regular videos without any warning.
Now, to be fair:
the regulators hadn't actually produced any help or advice for the industry on this
back then, a year and a half ago as I record this.
They were caught on the back foot.
And the vloggers themselves weren't really expected to know this,
it was the ad agency's job -- the client that hired them --
to check that they were compliant.
And the agencies either got carried away at what seemed like this new, unregulated world,
or they were American and didn't know or care about it.
British TV is still seen, at least by people in Britain, as a gold standard.
We don't do those horrible product placements.
Not on television, anyway. As for YouTube,
and the rest of the internet: well,
the rules are still being written.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that
my videos are open for product placement now,
if you're a company: do get in touch!
[Translating this video? Add your name here if you'd like credit!]