Ok, why exactly cant a sitcom show a brand name? (Out side of deliberate product placement) I mean, wouldn’t the company be glad for the face time? Why the need for a “Donuts Donuts” box or a can of “soda” or “cola” which is usually in a stylized manner that emulates brand names? How much covering up of a name is needed? (I saw “Goldfish” being eaten on Real World (MTV) yet black tape was over the ‘ld’ to make it read “Go Fish”)
What gives with this?
Also, why do some Tshirts in interviews get blurred out?
Also, how old is the term “Product placement”, and how old is the practice? Case in point, I remember in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dominoes Pizza was used (Yet Pizza Hut had the promo… go figure) Also, What About Reeses Pieces in ET? Too bad M&Ms/Mars didnt bite on that one.
Let’s say a sitcom is sponsored by Creemo toothpaste so the lead is seen regularly using Creemo toothpaste. then the show goes into syndication, but the local affiliates’ sponsor is Blammo toothpaste. Think they’re gonna be happy about spending ad dollars on a show that promotes a competitor? Of course not.
Or suppose the show is dropped by Creemo for whatever reason. Think any other toothpaste firms are gonna want to sponsore them?
A lotta ways for the nets to lose financially, few ways to win.
I recall reading that companies have to give permission for their products to be used. Seinfeld wanted to use Chef-Boyardee product but was denied permission so so Kramer fed Beefareeno to the horse. ET was at first supposed to follow M+Ms but was denied permission so Reese’s Pieces were used. Since getting permission can be a hassle and time is of the essence, it would seem easier not to bother.
And why, if you’re deliberately selling product placements, would you want to cheapen that by giving away placements, If Wheaties paid me a bunch of money to be the one and only breakfast cereal my characters eat, why would I show the label of Budweiser, who didn’t pay me anything?
On reality-type shows, there are a lot of companies who DON’T want their product associated with the people being featured (think, for instance, “Cops”)Rather than risk an angry sponsor pulling its entire schedule of ads on that network, it’s much more hassle-free just to obscure the label.
The producers of ET actually did offer the placement to M&M. When they turned it down, the producers then offered it to Reese’s pieces. But the practice goes back a long time farther.
The musical Bye Bye Birdie had a short animated sequence in it which was produced by Hanna-Barbera. The little kid in the cast ran around wearing Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear t-shirts in every scene. Going back a few years further (into the 1950s now), the sequel to “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (“Return of the Creature”) was shot at Cypruss Gardens in Florida, and somehow managed to squeeze in almost an entire show between shots of the creature.
You don’t have to get permission to use a brand name product on TV or whatever. (Of course, there’s always the possibility that the owner of that trademark is going to take umbrage at the way you used it and bring suit. So you might want to get permission anyway.)
My understanding is that in the United Kingdom, there is actually some kind of bar on mentioning real brand names except in commercial messages.
acsenray is correct – there is no requirement in the US that you need permission to mention a brand name. In addition, as long is the brand name is used properly in the script*, there is no grounds for a suit. A picture of a brand name product is no grounds for a suit, and the company would probably love the free publicity.
Note that even if you said something bad about the product, the company can’t really do anything (though they may threaten). Freedom of speech trumps trademark law.
Movies solicit payments for brand names; they don’t ask permission. M&M’s refused to pay to have ET advertised, so the producers went to Reese’s Pieces (the novelization, BTW, uses M&Ms).
In the UK, the BBC has (or had – I don’t know if it’s still in effect) a ban on the use of brand names. This was BBC policy, and had nothing to do with trademarks. The BBC was publically funded and they felt they should not be promoting products. It’s the reason why the Kinks’ “Lola” had “Coca Cola” in the original (and album) changed to “cherry cola” on the single.
And, of course, Evil is correct about the reason TV shows don’t usually name brand names.
*Basically, used as an adjective, not a noun or verb.
Most likely to the Marx Brothers last movie, Love Happy. The producers ran out of money, so paid for the final sequence by featuring the logos of various companies.
There is no such standard of “proper” usage. A kid in a sitcom can say “I don’t want Legos for my birthday” or “I don’t want Lego blocks for my birthday.” The trademark owner might prefer the latter, but has no recourse (other than to send stern letters) if the line said is the former.
Bottom line: We, as citizens, as writers, as broadcasters, as movie producers – basically as any kind of speaker – can use a brand name however we want. Trademark owners have absolutely no right or power to control our usage of language. It’s only when we slap that name on a product or service we’re selling that we can get into trouble.
You are right; I was simplifying a tad. However, you would assuredly get a stern letter from them if the kid did say “I don’t want Legos.” The letter is the important part: it indicates they are defending their trademark. They could theoretically sue you for this, but it’d be expensive and there’s always the chance that the court might rule the term is generic – which is the last thing they want.
If anything, you’ll be seeing more and more brand name products on TV in the future. Traditional commercials are being “zapped” or otherwise avoided by people using Tivo and other similar services. So, TV producers are already preparing for the inevitable demise of the traditional commercial, and are increasingly turning to product placement as a source of revenue.
I saw “Law & Order” producer Dick Wolf talking about this very phenomenon on “60 Minutes” not long ago. The vending machines at the station house used to sell generic soft drinks- watch and see if they’re not selling particular brands of soda in the future.
Current computer graphics technology makes it possible to affordably overdub video with a new product placements or generic products. It’s still a hassle, but this does offer a practical way out of the syndication and sponsor withdrawal issues of decades past.
You see this (or rather, you don’t see it, but it’s done) in telecasts of so-called ‘live’ sporting events: the actual product ads physically posted on fences at baseball stadiums were often changed to ads the network preferred (I assume they still are; there was some controversy over the practice, but I didn’t follow it for long, and I don’t watch spectator sports)
This technology is also used to ‘assist the viewing experience’ - e.g. the ‘down marker lines’ now ‘drawn’ in realtime in football telecasts appear to be colored grass vs. the superimposed hand-drawn computer graphic lines of decades past.
Just to nitpick here. Of course they could sue, but they would be thrown out of court. There’s actually no legal claim for this kind of a situation. You haven’t done anything that violates their trademark rights under federal law.
Seconded. I’m not much of a TV watcher now, but AFAIK, that is still the case - you just cannot have publicly funded channels being seen to allow sneaky advertising.
Even for the commercial channels, I do recall an advertisement that seemed to say that while some product naming would be acceptable, viewers were invited to notify - I think the Advertising Standards Authority - of any programme where it seemed excessive.
I don’t think they were paid for it though. I know a guy who worked for Gore, the makers of Glide dental floss. They were not told that their product would be in the episode when it was filmed. They were given a “heads up” three days or so before it was aired according to my acquaintence.
On another subject, could there be good grounds for a libel suit depending on how a product was mentioned? What if they claimed that Fritos caused cancer or something?
> The producers ran out of money, so paid for the final
> sequence by featuring the logos of various companies.
Ok, this might be as good a place to ask as any. Probably in the mid 80s, I saw a movie where, about 2/3 of the way through the action, we hear someone say, “cut” and the camera pulls away from the actors to reveal the production crew, sitting in director’s chairs, holding clipboards, etc.
Someone tells the crew that they have just run out of money and will need to use product placement to finish the film. So, for the final third of the movie, the characters are shown holding out-of-place products with the logos aimed at the screen. In other scenes, we see a hand reach into the frame to adjust a prominantly placed cereal box on the table to better display the logo. And so on. It was all tongue in cheek and pretty darn funny.
Anyone recognize this and know the name of the film?
I don’t know if that is necessarily the reason for this. I read that the Kinks’ Lola used cherry cola as opposed to Coca Cola to avoid copying John Lennon’s use of Coca Cola in Come Together, as he was sued by Chuck Berry for using “old flat top” “groovin up slowly” in the same song.
They both sound like BS to me. Consider that Come Together itself was a single played on the radio and had the line “he shoot Coca Cola.”