The New York Times “Sunday Styles” section looks at a disturbing development, or excellent business opportunity, depending on one’s point-of-view regarding consumerism and celebrity worship.
Screens big and small are already full of recognizable brands like Coke and Cheerios placed in strategic view, a practice known as explicit product placement. But, until recently, viewers had to work at identifying the shoes or earrings characters wore.
Because of the Internet, the selling of more than 20,000 products that are not easily recognizable or never identified in a script, called shopping-enabled entertainment, is taking off.
“There are thousands and thousands of products that are naturally embedded in these shows,” said Ashley Heather, a new-media entrepreneur and chief executive of Entertainment Media Works, which last March started an entertainment shopping site, StarStyle.com.