Product Placement - licence to mislead?

Abstract: Product placement, the cooperative effort of advertisers and creators of entertainment products in which trademarked goods are embedded into popular entertainment products to encourage their consumption, overriding entertainment and artistic concerns is becoming a mayor player in TV economics. The means in which this marketing measure may be practised in Sweden are regulated by legal rules and self-regulations. This paper deals with those regulations. The legal regulations this paper focuses on are the Marketing Act and the Radio and TV Act. Regulations of consequence but not as significant concerning the regulation of the practice are European Union Law and The ICC International Code of Adverting Practice. Product placement have just recently been identified as practice of consequence by the Commission which proposes that the practice should not be considered to be a form of surreptitious advertising, as defined by the TVWF Directive. But a practice which is legal with some requirements, this to diminish the disadvantage the European TV Company market have comparing to the US Market, where the practice is legal.