I’m eagerly awaiting the opportunity to see Morgan Spurlock’s (of Supersize Me fame) latest film release – The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

A documentary into the dark heart of product placement, advertising and marketing in films and TV shows would be right up my street as you’ll see from some of my recent blogs.

However, does the fact that the BBC can’t have any product placement (except for Tom’s curved nail file in The Apprentice and all their senior reporters wearing Berghaus jackets) mean that it will never be able to screen it or will the fact that it’s a documentary mean the rules don’t apply?

Also, with a film like this, I’d imagine the brands that funded it wouldn’t be too distressed about people using torrent sites to download it for nothing as viewers are going to see the product placement either way. Not sure that the studios would be too chuffed though.

So, my plan to solve the issue of piracy (that the film industry constantly claim has virtually reduced it to poverty) is to have ALL future films funded by brands via product placement and advertising on a pay per click basis. As these brands would be paying for the films, they will probably want to influence the script too, so they will need to employ entire departments of screenwriters and editors to make sure the viewers are getting the right message in the right circumstances at the right time. The viewer can download it for free and then the film studio gets a fee from the brands for each download– a bit like a sponsored link on Google.

Everyone’s a winner – as long as you never want to see anything that’s actually any good.

I love The Apprentice, me. Every Wednesday I feverishly sit down to watch a bunch of ego maniacs humiliate themselves on national television, with a few good eggs occasionally thrown in by the programme makers to at least attempt some sort of yin and yang balance to the show.

One of my favourite things about The Apprentice is that it’s on the BBC, so it’s uninterrupted by adverts every 15 minutes or so. I know – I really should love watching ads given the industry I work in, but some shows are just too good to interrupt (which is why I get so much use out of my Sky Plus box, as you’ll see from one of my previous blogs).

This year though, it seems that the BBC has broken the rules on product placement; firstly I didn’t see a “P” at the start and end of the show and secondly product placement is still banned on the BBC.

Yes… I’m talking about Tom Pellereau’s curved nail file.

Aside from the £250K investment reward for winning the show, Tom (and by extension Lord Sugar) have probably got in excess of 10 times that amount worth of free publicity, not to mention a pretty easy route to market with buyers.

I guarantee that as a result of this show (funded by license payers, I hasten to add), Tom will pick up an incredible number of new customers for his nail file – probably more than he could ever dream of.

Well done Tom – and what a way to win new business!

There were reports in the press recently that a Labour leaflet campaign was targeting cancer sufferers with a message that their lives could be at risk if a Tory government was to come into power using the strap line “are the Tories a change you can afford?”

Labour claims that they used publicly available social demographic data and the data management company Experian confirmed that both Labour and the Conservatives use its Mosaic database, which divides voters into 67 groups and identifies likely cancer patients using anonymised hospital statistics, including postcodes and the diagnoses of patients.

This throws up interesting questions about what customer information a brand should use in tailoring their communications.

The holy grail of all customer marketing is surely to get to a point where brands can treat their customers as individuals but if they are seen to be taking advantage of someone’s disadvantages to promote a product or service then this risks alienating the customer and potentially turning into a PR nightmare.

As a Business Development Manager I have the advantage of being able to react to information I receive during a conversation and amend my communications accordingly.

When I am making new business calls to marketing decision makers part of my job is to identify ‘pain points’ and highlight requirements that are not currently adequately provided by their internal resources or current suppliers. This gives me a great reason for them to meet my client. However I’m always very aware that identifying pain points is one thing, but overstating them is likely to turn the prospect off.

Quite often the questions I ask are designed to raise these areas in the prospect’s mind but sometimes ‘in their mind’ is enough and these ‘problems’ remain unspoken. If, in their mind they can see a problem that is currently unsolved and match that with a potential solution that my client has expertise in then I’m more than half way there.

In my experience there is such a thing as overselling your benefits and if that is on the back of excessively highlighting a prospective client’s (or for that matter voter’s) problems then you’re bound to risk appearing mercenary or as Phyllis Delik, 80, who received one of Labours leaflets described it “callous”.

What do you think the limit should be on marketers using sensitive data to target their customers, if any?