Nonprofit Product Placement: Human Rights Advocacy in Film and Television

Abstract

As non-governmental organizations attempt to gain influence, membership, and funds in an increasingly crowded field, they are turning to popular culture as a way to spread both their brand and their message. This article examines Amnesty International USA’s use of what has traditionally been a corporate advertising technique: product placement in popular film and television. It argues that NGOs engage in product placement as a form of strategic communication with three interrelated goals: brand management, issue advocacy, and social norms marketing. This overlap creates theoretical outcomes and ethical considerations which, while not unique to second-order forms of communication, have not yet been explored with relation to human rights advocacy. This article first defines and gives examples of such product placement and concludes with a discussion of ethics considerations for advocacy organizations contemplating using this strategy.

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