Product Placement Advertising - The anti-DVR Commercial

I'm not aware of any "rule" changes--it has always boiled down to who pays and who doesn't.

What has changed (and really come full circle) is aggressive product placement. Now there are companies whose only function is to broker placements.

Cheers,
Tom

 

It's an old problem. Many of the Peanuts (Charlie Brown) holiday specials were sponsored by Coca-Cola, and then later by snack-cake-maker Dolly Madison. The opening and closing credits had product tie-ins, and have had to be cut out now that those sponsorships have been 3-decades expired.

 

This one was an awsome placement after brenda lee munched on a reeses peanutbutter cup they went to commercials and it was a copuple watching the closer on tv and they too were indulging on the tasty treat. I thought it was a clever tie in.

 

i remeber this one. Very funny indeed! Arrested Development was a diamond in the rough. I just hope they do make that often talked about movie.

 

When the Law & Order began airing in re-runs on TNT, new digital technology was used to insert "product placements" into the show. The easiest to spot is for Coca-Cola; any time you see a Coke can sitting on a desk, it has been added digitally.

 

Just heard "Prius" in a Lie to Me episode.

 

Kobalt tools on Ice Road Truckers.

 

I remember Deadliest Catch had one of the Time Bandit's guys drinking out of a Geico coffee mug. Then we started seeing all the commercials for Geico with the Time Bandit captains.

 

Yeah, that was pretty clever. Of course I missed it because I bypassed the commercial...

 

Burn Notice and MGD 64. The first time I noticed it I was "surprised" to see a label so clearly on the table of the guys. They then broke to a commercial for MGD 64.

 

I skip ahead too but a part of the commercial caught my eye so I went back to watch it. It is that kind of creative advertising that will get some people to watch the commercials. It does not happen very often but every now and then I will see a part of a commercial that makes me go back and watch it.

It's funny when I was a kid I lived three years on an army base in germany. AFN (Armed Forces Network)was prohibited from showing commercials so they had these corny PSA's. After about a year of that I longed for regular tv commercials. Every now and then during a live football broadcast AFN was slow on the switch and a US commercial would make it on the air and we loved it....

 

Eureka has been making Apple laptops fairly prominent this year. Also Subarus seem to be fairly common.

The most out of place one I saw was a few years ago on Stargate Atlantis they were sitting on a deck looking over the water and popped open cans of Budweiser! Why do I think canned beer would not be to high on the priority list to be transported by stargate to a remote outpost???

 

Most obvious is the plaid cutoff shirt that Larry the Cable guy wears. This must be sponsered by Walmart...

Seriously, I've noticed a few local news broadcasts propping open a laptop on the newsdesk. Las Vegas, Tucson and El Paso have had Dell or Apple laptops open for the anchor"people"to see. Of course, none of them refer to the laptops as they are solely reading from the teleprompters.

 

I know you guys didn't see it, but the soap opera parody "Passions" made a big deal about DirecTV after NBC cancelled it and the show went to The 101 for a few months.

Suddenly all the stills of character's homes had DirecTV dishes superimposed and the characters even started talking about how great it was compared with cable.

It was done in a humerous way and was pretty funny.

 

Chuck is a huge shower of iPhones. There is no mistaking what they are as the often show the phone when someone is getting a call.

 

NCIS doesn't use iPhones, as they are heavily sponsored by Dell.

But NCIS: Los Angeles shows off iPhones in every episode.

 

The single most blatant example of this can be seen on virtually any tv shows with street scenes:

UPS & FedEx trucks are always in the background.

The product placement that puts me ROFLMAO though is a police department office scene with Macs on their desks! Like any PD anywhere would spend the money it would take to run a Mac network...:lol::lol::lol:

 

Big Bang Theory, there's Cheesecake factory, and lots of geek level product placement. I'm sure ThinkGeek loves them, though I think some things are on BBT first. There was some fairly obvious Windows 7 product placement with Sheldon extolling it's virtues over Vista.

Overall though, fairly well done. Most of the product placement fits with the culture. Also one of the few shows that I've seen mention an iPhone app.

Some shows are mainly vehicles for product placement, some better than others. It annoys me when Donald Trump introduces something like "Executives from Playstation." No, they are not Playstation execs, they are Sony Computer Entertainment execs.

Maybe companies just need better commercials. I'll stop for an Old Spice commercial (the long ones), new M&M character commercials etc. But if the product placement gets too annoying, it will alienate the fans. I agree on the Bones placement, horrible.

 

Burn Notice and Hyundai. Sometimes rather blatant. Hyundai was on Leverage last season.