Product Placement Discovered in 19th Century British Novels

Seattle PI: Product Placement Discovered in 19th Century British Novels

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Get Ready for Ads in Books, with the drop in e-reader prices, tech players entering the book retail trade, and the ever-downward pressure on book prices, e-book or otherwise, publishers, facing diminishing profits, are turning to product placement in books to bolster their sagging bottom lines.

This should not come as a shock; television, movies, and video games have been planted with product advertisements for quite some time now. It's been a veritable Victory Garden for the Mad Men of Madison Avenue.

with the drop in e-reader prices, tech players entering the book retail trade, and the ever-downward pressure on book prices, e-book or otherwise, publishers, facing diminishing profits, are turning to product placement in books to bolster their sagging bottom lines.

What is little known is just how far back this practice dates. Recently, the Annenberg Center for Communication, established to cleanse  the family name of patriarch Moe Annenberg's  highly dubious activities, has been conducting a survey of nineteenth century British literature. To their surprise, they have, in the process, discovered advertising so subtly placed within classic texts that it has hitherto gone unnoticed by scholars and readers alike. Many of the ads, it has since been learned, were part of an ongoing campaign by Ogilvy & Mather, the ad agency originally established by Patrick Ogilvy and Cotton Mather in the 17th century, with offices in Edinburgh and Boston, to promote fire, brimstone, and treacle for everyday use in the home.