Did Propel Pull Product Placement Promo From Bravo TV Reality Series "Workout" And Why Should We Care?

Propel Fitness Water (a Gatorade company) has been a product placement sponsor of the Bravo TV fitness reality show "Workout" for the last couple of seasons. It has been a nice tie-in. At least until the show got itself in (forgive-me) hot water with the folks at Propel.

In a recent episode, two "characters" displayed a significant lack of sensitivity as they were overheard on tape gossiping about how "fake" a clients breasts were. Turns out the client had re-constructive breast surgery after breast cancer surgery. They were "caught" in their gossiping by the woman's boyfriend (off camera), and apparently apologized to him, and to the viewers of the "reality" show on camera.

The after-affect of this episode was the apparent pulling of the sponsorship by Propel. I say apparent because I have not yet been able to find a mainstream media source of a statement from Propel stating that they are indeed pulling the sponsorship. There are several reports by bloggers, but they seem to all pull back on one another as sources.

But, regardless of whether Propel pulled the sponsorship or not, the bigger, and perhaps more murky question for us marketers is, when do we abandon our sponsorship commitments? How offensive must an action be? Should a marketer respond because of our personal offensive of the comments by the cast members, or because of viewer and consumer outrage--or both?

The answer may just be like the definition of obscenity.