There was a white paper from the Writers Guild back in 2005 complaining about some of the worse kinds of ‘product integration’. It doesn’t seem like things are any better now. Are You SELLING to Me?
Well, they also did fan service in one scene where the other charector said (to the affect) - “this isnt a commercail - lets go already”
Did they ever show or mention the brand? I don’t recall that they did. If not, then it wasn’t a product placement. It was just something they thought was funny. No company is going to pay for placement that doesn’t actually show you what they’re selling.
Well, that kind of proves that it wasn’t product placement. An advertiser is not going to pay for an incorrect description of the product.
The most obnoxiously forced product placement I’ve ever seen was from the movie “Disclosure” (the one where Demi Moore is sexually harassing Michael Douglas for some inexplicable reason.) At one point Douglas’ character goes to the lounge for a Coke and we see the Coke machine. Fine, people do this. But after he pushes the button for his Coke the camera cuts to an extreme close-up of the can coming into the vending chute, with the letters “COKE” lining up perfectly and filling the ENTIRE movie screen. Seriously, it was all of a sudden:
COKE
It boggles the mind how much time they must’ve wasted filming that over and over and over until it lined up just right.
The more overt ones can be annoying, but I just chalk them up as commercials and don’t worry about it too much and kind of enjoy the effort whent hey manage to integrate it better.
Figure I can’t complain too much that the product I’m watching for free because it lives on an advertiser model has decided it needs to keep the ads in front of me when I’ve skipping over the old fashioned ones.
Seriously. I love Shark Tank, but those ads are not only distracting, but are actively damaging to the premise of the show. That’s not real at all; it’s contrived, forced, and scripted.
Terrible
The latest episode of Pawn Stars (Season 6, episode 14) had 3 product placements for Skype.
That is getting ridiculous.
Came in to post this today. When you have the old man saying “That’s a pretty great piece of technology!” it’s time to take a step back methinks.
In last night’s rather genealogy-heavy episode of CSI, you’d have thought that Ancestry.com was an official sponsor given the way one of the guest stars gushed about how wonderful it is. I have to say, it was a little off-putting. It took me out of the episode for a moment.
CSI. Product placement. Dell.
I remember a good one. In the Dragnet movie they keep getting worse cars as they trash old one, until the wind up with a Yugo, “the cutting edge of Serbo-Croatian technology.”
Again, there’s no way that that was product placement. Just because a brand name is mentioned in a show or movie doesn’t mean it is product placement.
It seems THE PRICE IS RIGHT is nothing but product placement.
“The Pice Is Right” comes from the ancient American TV tradition of incorporating sponsors’ ads right into the show. It demonstrates that there’s really nothing new about product placement.
Show? Yes…closeups on the Windows interface, etc. Oh, and each of the blatant references was immediately followed by a commercial break where the first ad was a loud, vibrant Microsoft Surface ad.