Procter & Gamble Tests TV news advertising link

Procter & Gamble Co. is testing a novel and controversial marketing strategy by tagging commercials onto news stories produced by a media company for hundreds of local television newscasts, according to Reuters. On Wednesday P&G said it has signed an agreement with INNX, which develops and produces news reports on health care and other topics.

Reports by San Diego-based INNX will remain independent, but a 10-second P&G-brand commercial will be attached to the end of each relevant news story. The ad will direct viewers to the television station’s web site and a page that features more information about the story, with one-third of the page devoted to a specific P&G product, Terry Hirschfeld, chief marketing officer at INNX, said.

For example, a story on the flu vaccine could be linked to P&G’s NyQuil, she said.

INNX reaches nearly 9 million viewers per day on 210 NBC television affiliates, the company said.

“We believe in holistic marketing and finding new ways to more fully communicate with our consumers,” Bob Wehling, global marketing officer for P&G, said in a news release. “This agreement will allow us to test new waters with a promising and innovative marketing tool.”

But the agreement also raises questions about potential advertiser influence over news stories, said Joseph Angotti, chair of the broadcast program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

“It just violates every journalism ethic that we have tried to teach our students. It’s just as wrong as it can be,” Mr. Angotti, who was executive producer for NBC Nightly News from 1978-82, said.

Hirschfeld said that P&G will have no input into the content of the news stories. Further, if a P&G product were to be shown incidentally in a news story — such as a NyQuil bottle shown while the camera pans the cold medicine aisle — that product would be disqualified from advertising with that segment, she said.

“We are very pure on our journalistic development,” Hirschfeld said. “No advertiser has an input into any story we do.”

P&G declined to discuss financial details of the agreement.