Like this:

This morning on my walk to the station I noticed an advert for double velvet toilet roll with the familar red & white circle announcing “As seen on TV”.

It struck me that all this meant was that the company had paid for a TV advert for the product – in this case a succession of successful adverts but still all paid for by the company - rendering the sticker in the advert an advert for another advert.

To me this causes “As seen on TV” to lose its value.

But did it ever have value? I remember, years ago, thinking that items marked as such were cool, it gave them street cred. But I was young then and it may always have been the case that “As seen on TV” meant the company had paid for an advert rather than it being such a good product that people on TV were using it or recommending it out of choice.

Or is my decline in value of the phrase or the product placement merely because TV is so common place, back when the phrase influenced my perception of the product we had 4 terrestrial TV channels at home, now I can pause, record and watch 34 channels on my computer via freeview. TV is readily available to the masses and advert breaks no longer last 2 minutes but last up to 7. Many many products are seen everyday by many many viewers, if all of these were marked then I would imagine that the exclusivity of the stamp would be lost & products “not seen on TV” would seem more attractive.

A decline of magazine style programs reviewing products or the over familiarity with TV, either way the mark has less impact on me than it once did.

Although its stirred enough in me to produce a blog post and have been thinking of the kid/MD of double velvet playing and planting trees all day so maybe its still a clever link of advertising…

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