Blanking out brand names on non-fiction TV shows

Factual Questions
1

As a fan of Mythbusters and other shows on the various non-fiction cable channels, I’ve noticed that most of them obscure, in some fashion or other, brand names of products that appear on the show. For instance, Jamie was wearing a Simpson fire suit in a driving experiment a few weeks ago, and they put black tape over all the Simpson logos on the suit. (I recognized it from its styling.) On last week’s show, they were firing yellow tennis balls at a ninja, and they had carefully spray painted over the logos on the balls.

On other shows they’ll use video effects to blur out a brand name or logo that wasn’t covered during the original filming.

I’m reasonably familiar with trademark and copyright law, so I know that simply showing a mfr’s logo is NOT a violation of trademark law, although it might conceivably infringe copyright. However, I seriously doubt that the channel’s lawyers are worried about a copyright lawsuit, especially since, in the cases I’ve described, the appearances were mostly positive and could have been perceived as relatively valuable endorsements.

However, the endorsement issue brings up some other possibilities. Obviously, if Wilson tennis balls was an advertiser, the network wouldn’t want Jamie and Adam to use a competing product. In fact, they’d have an obvious motivation to engage in some product placement.

So I’m thinking that there are a couple of possibilities: they want to avoid the appearance of product placement. They aren’t getting money from the products’ makers, and they don’t want viewers to think they are. The main motivation is preserving the program’s reputation, which might suffer if they were perceived as engaging in blatant or even subtle product placement.

Another possibility is that they’re just playing it safe: even if in most cases the portrayals of the products in question are largely positive, they want to avoid any possibility that the makers might complain or threaten a lawsuit.

Of course, these things aren’t mutually exclusive, so maybe together they provide enough reason to do what they do.

I’d be interested in knowing if that’s all there is to it, or if there are other factors at work. Does anyone know? (I’d prefer a minimum of WAGing, please.) Thanks.

2

One other issue is syndication, and future sponsors. If the tennis balls they use clearly say “Wilson”, and later the show is sold into syndication to a network that is heavily sponsored by Dunlop or Prince, there could be a problem.
Alton Brown explained this on one of his behind-the-scenes shows. He said it’s known as “Greeking”.

3

Wikipedia: Product displacement - Wikipedia

4

I remember on *Mythbusters *they had an episode exploring Cola myths, but they very carefully didn’t mention Coca Cola and hid all appearances of the logo.

Then a few seasons later they had one on the Diet Coke/Mentos effect, and could use both brand names freely.

So something had changed in between times. Notoriety and respect for Mythbusters, I expect.

5

I work on a lot of local, independent films as a hobby. Most of the directors are fanatical about not showing or mentioning any real life products, occasionally to the point of detriment, like having really obvious black tape all over everything, or making up really dumb-sounding Tarantino-inspired but not Tarantino-quality fake product names. None of them can explain why they do it. They just DO. When I work it out logically in my head, I think, no one is gonna see this piece of shit, and if they do they’re not gonna care, and if they care you’re going to get 10 times as much publicitly as you’ll get any other conceivable way. But what do I know, I’m just a dumb actor.

6

A big part of the reason for this is Diet Coke and Mentos are necessary ingredients to get the geyser. They determined the chemical composition of Diet Coke is ideal, whereas other sodas would create an inferior explosion. The nucleation sites on Mentos were necessary as well, not just any candy would do (although I’m sure there ARE other candies that can work just as well)

It’s annoying to me when they blur out logos on hats/clothes/food because I know they’re trying to hide it. In real life we don’t hide corporate logos, why do it on TV?

7

People complain about product placement, but obviously fake products really take me out of the movie/TV show more than obvious product placement.

8

In the case of Mythbusters, I suspect another reason might be that if they ever showed tennis balls with the brand X label, someone on their messageboard would be sure to claim that brand Y tennis balls would have yielded a completely different result. So it’s probably a lot easier for them to go with generic Mythbusters branded products for all purposes.

9

That’s what I was thinking when I started reading the thread. I mean, you know how some of us can get on these message boards… well, it’s the same with Mythbusters.

10

Cite? Unless new info has surfaced since I last looked into this, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong. Diet Coke is used because it leaves less of a mess, by virtue of containing no sugar. The “Diet Coke has the ideal chemical composition” thing was an urban legend that went around when the Mentos/soda thing was discovered, but it’s been debunked.

11

Science of Mentos-Diet Coke.

12

Wow, color me surprised.

I remember when the phenomenon first started, there was a wave of “Diet Coke is chemically ideal” stories, followed later by a wave of “Diet Coke is only used because it doesn’t make as much of a mess; any soda would work as well” stories. Your article is a couple years newer than anything I’ve read about it, though.

13

This article, which is a source for portions of the Wikipedia entry on Product Displacement that Measure for Measure cited, quotes Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle as saying, “We wanted to use a Mercedes because . . . this guy, this gangster would drive a Mercedes . . . but if you use Mercedes then clearly you have to get permission, and we asked for their permission and they refused it,” because the car was shown in the slums of Mumbai.

So apparently, in some situations producers do have to obtain permission from the trademark holders or face the threat of legal action, on the basis of brand disparagement, I presume, rather than trademark or copyright violations.

It would be nice if a lawyer could spell out some of the actual legal risks and tactics that come into play in such circumstances.

14

At the risk of hijacking my own thread, in that episode, the Mythbusters actually tested each of the various components of soda so see which were responsible for the geyser effect. According to Wiki,

“Other active ingredients in the cascade-effect reaction include aspartame (artificial sweetener), potassium benzoate (preservative), and caffeine in the Diet Coke; and gum arabic and gelatin in the Mentos. The ingredients seem to have a perfect compatibility with each other.”

Presumably, any other soda that used the same ingredients in approximately the same proportions would have the same effect.

15

If they are talking about cola beverages generally, they will need to avoid using “Coke” as a stand-in for all such beverages. Coca-Cola is very vigilant about preventing the genericization of their mark (disregard the part of the article where it suggests that “Coke” has become genericized, it is just your typical Wikipedia boner–you infringe Coca-Cola’s mark at your peril).

I’ve even heard that Coke sends out personnel to restaurants to ensure that waitstaff correct you if you ask for “Coke” at an establishment that does not serve it. This may be a bit of an urban legend though.

It has nothing to do with respect for Mythbusters, which program remains a disreputable outpost of basic cable.

I rather think this has to do with avoiding litigation rather than M-B having a viable claim for infringement or dilution. It’s almost certainly the case that there would be no consumer confusion (the key element of infringement). As to dilution, I think it would be hard to show that you are applying the M-B to an unlike product (which for non-famous marks is permissible; M-B, of course, is easily a famous mark however). That is, the filmmakers are not saying “This is a Mercedes-Benz movie,” they are instead depicting the famous mark along with the product for which it stands. As to tarnishment, I think plaintiffs alleging that portraying Mercedes-Benzes being driven in the slums of Mumbai hardly rises to the level of commercial interference that would justify abridging a filmmaker’s artistic freedoms.

16

I’ve had enough servers ask, “Is Pepsi okay?” to think that it’s probably more than an urban legend.

Hey! Disparage the Mythbusters at your peril. You may be a lawyer, but they have explosives!

So what you’re saying is that even if Mercedes didn’t have the law on their side, and probably wouldn’t have prevailed, they had enough cash to go to court and make life difficult for the filmmakers?

17

So how do filmmakers typically handle common household scenes where someone opens a cupboard and there’s a dozen real products inside (cereal, cleaners, whatever)? I mean, obviously they can, say, arrange camera angles so that you never see inside the cupboard as someone takes something out, but what if the script calls for seeing all the products? It just seem to me that for verisimilitude, filmmakes would have to be able to show the products that are really in use in such situations.

18

Yes. I couldn’t really see a federal judge saying that Mercedes-Benz’s interest in keeping their brand posh outweighed a filmmaker’s First Amendment rights. Whether it was M-B throwing their weight around, or, as I think might be even more likely, the studio preferring to keep their working relationship with M-B happy (sure it cost tens of thousands of pounds to edit out the M-B symbol, but on the other hand, so does buying a Benz to use in your film), I couldn’t say.

19

Considering that Mythbusters has all the scientific integrity of a dinosaur exhibit at a fundie amusement park, I’ll take that with a grain of salt. The actual scientific study linked above says that caffeine has nothing to do with it.

20

I can’t get to the full published study, but IIRC, the Mythbusters actually tested each of the individual components of the soda, and observed a reaction from caffeine. The summary article you linked to only states, “But caffeine-free Diet Coke did just as well, suggesting that caffeine does not accelerate the reaction, at least at the normal levels in the drink.”

If the Appalachian State University study only tested the various brands of soda, they may not have controlled for other differences in the formulations of the different versions. E.g., caffeine-free soda may use different sweeteners or preservatives. So the Mythbusters may have been more scientific than the scientific study.

And didn’t you read my warning about dissing the Mythbusters?