Thursday, February 21, 2008

Product placement in tween lit

Susan Katz, publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books, on product placement in Mackenzie Blue, a new fiction series for 8- to-12-year-old girls:

“If you look at Web sites, general media or television, corporate sponsorship or some sort of advertising is totally embedded in the world that tweens live in. It gives us another opportunity for authenticity.”
Yes, authenticity.

The novels' author, Tina Wells, is "chief executive of Buzz Marketing Group, which advises consumer product companies on how to sell to teenagers and preteenagers." Read more:

In Books for Young, Two Views on Product Placement (New York Times)

comments: 2

Anonymous said...

This is disgusting. Was it in the novel 1984 where the meaning of words was so twisted that they were used to signify their opposite?

Authenticity, then, is now a synonym for child manipulation?

Michael Leddy said...

Yep. That someone from HarperCollins can make this statement without irony is just amazing.