Ah, product placement. It's a subject that's come up before. We have an award for it, and even as far back as those care free days of 2005, Karina was writing about the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild Of America protesting it. The telling quote from that piece, "Our writers are being told to perform the function of ad copywriter, but to disguise this as storytelling." And isn't that where most of us have always drawn the line in the sand? The placing of products into sets was kind of an understood cost of doing business, but having the writers change scripts to incorporate them was a whole other ball of (Turtle) wax. Unfortunately, those (Foster Farms) chickens have come home to roost.
Posts with tag ProductPlacement
More signs of the product placement apocalypse
Continue reading More signs of the product placement apocalypse
The Brought to You by TV Squad Award nominees
I was honestly surprised by the number of responses we got to the call for nominees for The Brought to You by TV Squad Awards. It turns out that a LOT of people are as irritated by blatant product placement as I am. Hurray! Is this the wave of the future? And if it is, can we get advertisers to eliminate commercials? Because if I have to endure ads tucked within my shows, then I don't want even to have to speed past them with my TiVo. Let's have one or the other, shall we? Because I'd hate to start boycotting Krispy Kreme and Stride gum just because I've been bombarded. As it turns out, there were four stand-out nominees; I will tell you who they are after the jump, and then you will have a chance to vote for the Reader's Choice winner (which, in this case, is actually an obnoxious loser). But I did want to mention two runners up: 30 Rock gets an honorable mention for its mention of Verizon, but it doesn't quite make the cut because of the humorous way it handles the mention, and the show's ability to poke fun at itself. The other honorable mention goes to Ugly Betty for its hour-long ad for Wicked, but it still didn't quite make the cut.
So, the nominees for the most obnoxious abuse of product placement within their episodes are ...
Continue reading The Brought to You by TV Squad Award nominees
Jimmy Kimmel is bringing back live commercial spots
Remember that song, "Everything Old Is New Again"? Well, it's true. In the old days of broadcasting, it was typical for the host of a show to appear during the hour or half-hour doing a live commercial endorsing the sponsor of the program. That old idea is being re-invented and ABC will soon announce that Jimmy Kimmel will be doing live spots on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Call it the ultimate in product integration, if you will, but it's just one more way for advertisers to guard against DVR watchers zapping through the commercials or live viewers clicking to another channel. And if they're smart, they'll make the commercials clever enough to be worth watching. The live ads will launch in May.Continue reading Jimmy Kimmel is bringing back live commercial spots
Things I Hate About TV: Extremely blatant product placement
A few days ago I happened to catch an episode of the NBC soap opera Days of our Lives that my wife was watching. Hey, don't look at me that way! My wife is a fan of the show. Oh, sure, I used to watch it during the Shane/Kimberly/ Patch/Kayla/Frankie/Jennifer heydays of the late 80's, but it doesn't do anything for me now. Really, I'm serious!
Anyway, the scene I walked in on was one between Chelsea Brady and Nick Fallon (I got those names from my wife, I swear!). It seemed that Chelsea was depressed about one thing or another and Nick had the solution to cheer her up. They went to a nearby computer, where Nick began to pull up pictures, on the Wallgreens photo site, of the couple during happier times. When Chelsea asked how he did this (because she is obviously technically non-savvy) Nick responded that he just uploaded the pictures to the Walgreens.com and, I believe, he added some end tagline like 'It's just so simple.'
Holy. Freakin. Crap.
Continue reading Things I Hate About TV: Extremely blatant product placement
The Dead Zone: Drift
(S06E10) All season, I have been trying to put a positive spin on bad writing, poor casting choices (Sheriff Turner, remember her? Barely? We never see her, so maybe they think she was a poor choice too), episodes that seem recycled from other seasons, and others that are completely forgettable and irrelevant. But tonight was just the last straw. I have had it. I cannot think of one more good thing to say about this infomercial for Visa that is running around disguising itself as television.Continue reading The Dead Zone: Drift
Product placement - the anti-TiVo
Sure, Trimspa and KFC may think they've got the answer to TiVo-proof advertising. But no matter how much information they cram on each frame of the commercial so that it'll be visible during fast-forward, there's no way to defeat the 30-second skip (or bathroom break, for that matter).So advertisers are turning in droves to product placement. According to Nielsen, Coca-Cola paid for 3,355 occurrences of television product placements last year. And they weren't alone. Blogging Stocks has top 10 lists of advertisers and the shows they placed products on.
I probably shouldn't be too shocked that American Idol topped the second list with 4,085 placements in 2006. In fact, almost all of the shows on the list were reality TV, which I find somewhat reassuring. I'm not sure what's up with King of Queens though. The show was number 6 with 1,954 product placements.
Thursday was product placement night on NBC
So the first night of NBC's new "Must-See TV" lineup (except Scrubs) turned out to be eventful for more than one reason: not only did we see a pivotal episode of The Office, the cast of My Name Is Earl in Claymation, and the first Thursday 30 Rock, we saw more self-referrential product placements in one night than at any time I could remember.The first one was when we saw The Office's Kevin going nuts over the Staples MailMate shredder. "This shreds eveything," he says with a sense of childlike wonder. "It shreds CDs. It shreds credit cards..." The look on his face after he realized he shredded his own credit card is priceless, as was the salad he made with the shredder right before the credits. Oh, and by the way, Staples had an ad for the MailMate during the "supersized" episode.
Continue reading Thursday was product placement night on NBC
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: The Option Period
(S01E09) OK, now this is getting a little strange. This is the fourth episode of an NBC show (the others were two episodes of 30 Rock and an episode of The Office) where product placement was mentioned. In this, because of a blow the company is going to take on the Macau deal, Jordan says that 15 people are going to have to be let go from the show. Jokingly, Matt and Danny bring up product placement, but Jordan thinks it's something they should seriously consider.
The hell? Is NBC trying to convince us that product placement is here, it's good, and we should get used to it?
Continue reading Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: The Option Period
Interesting product placement on 30 Rock
The Newark Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall (actually his friend Phil Rosenthal) points out on his blog that last night's pilot for 30 Rock had an interesting bit of product placement: the oven that "vice president of East Coast and microwave oven programming" Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwon) developed, the GE Profile Trivection oven, is real (notice what it says on the lower left corner of that web page: "The GE Profile oven with Trivection technology becomes a star on NBC's new sitcom, 30 Rock.").But that's not the most interesting part. NBC decided to air an ad for the Trivection oven right after the scene where Jack talks about the oven to Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and producer Pete (Scott Adsit). It's as if they wanted to emphasize to the audience, "Hey, folks, this isn't some comedy thing Tina came up with! It really does use three kinds of heat!" Considering the fact that the scene was making fun of Donaghy, I'm not sure if this was the right move by GE. Was this an ingenious way to introduce a product or an act of desperation by NBC's parent company? Let me know in the comments.
Actors, writers protest product placement
Yeah, I hate it too. The Screen Actors Guild and the
Writers Guild of America staged a joint
protest in Los Angeles yesterday over product placement. The two organizations have been united against the same
cause since November. They picketed
and chanted in front of a building in Beverly Hills where an advertising summit, sponsored by Ad Age, was taking place.
SAG and WGA weren't allowed in the meeting, despite their requests to be allowed in. Both groups are pushing for
regulations, or a "code of conduct" on product placement in television and movies. At the very least, they
want more money for not only being storytellers but also advertising
copywriters.While Pepsi cans and Fed Ex trucks in the background are all strategically placed, the writers and actors have a problem when the powers-that-be require them to work products into a story or even write an entire story around a product.
Giveaway Monday: That '70s Show The Complete Series Stash box set
Giveaway Monday: Back to You season one DVD
Six shows that I am watching pretty regularly this season
