Product Placement Paranoia

The best magazine you’ve never heard of, Mental Floss, recently did a feature story on “Five Triumphs in Product Placement.” Personally, I put product placement right in there with subliminal sex messages in the ice cubes of magazine liquor ads. It concerns me that amongst the messages we receive that are supposedly content, where the playing field is hypothetically level between the purveyor of the message and its receiver, there are “placed” messages intended to sway or deceive the unsuspecting (that would be you and me).

When I see Simon Cowell drinking from a big red Coca Cola cup, I can see this is product placement, at its most obvious and crass. Harmless. I could care less if Simon drinks Coke, nor do I care if Randy and Paula do. My bet is that what’s in Paula’s supersized cup ain’t Coke anyway.

But when I discover that Reese’s Pieces paid big dough for the rights to have cuddly, trustworthy E.T. chomping down its product in E.T.: Extraterrestrial, or that Jerry Seinfeld sold rights to the Junior Mint company for use in the famous Kramer-Junior Mints surgery scene, I get all choked up. I’m annoyed and concerned that I’ve been hoodwinked, tricked into assigning value to a product because I was otherwise enjoying what I thought was an innocent bit of entertainment.

Mental Floss: Five Product Placement Triumphs:

1. White Castle - was not the original pick for the Harold and Kumar movie. It was supposed to be Krispy Kreme.

2. Junior Mints – you already know the story.

3. Reese’s Pieces - not the original pick for E.T. M&M’s had a shot but turned it down.

4. Ray Ban – prior to Tom Cruise wearing them in Risky Business, their Wayfarer brand was going down the tubes. For a $50,000 product placement fee, sales went through the roof.

5. Fed-Ex – this one was not paid for, yet the benefits derived from Cast Away were priceless.

Yes, it’s a free country and capitalism knows few boundaries, but all I can say is, with the profusion of product placement now that TIVO has for all intents and purposes totally degraded television advertising...

Buyer Beware!!

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Product placement at its funkiest and best:

Radiohead: House of Cards

Comments

[loose]

Thanks Brian. Saw your web site. Great. I don't know what the paradigm will be, but all we need to know is when we're being sold and when we're digesting content free of any agenda or hidden interest.

[Brian Stemmler]

There is a great insert in a recent edition of TV Week outlining the way advertising has integrated with content over the past 60 years

http://www.tvweek.com/60-years-of-advertising/

It's remarkable to see how bold some of the marketing was back then when you had a product manufacturer sponsoring an entire program with ads built into the content. It seems we have come full circle when you have shows now such as Jimmy Kimmel and "30 Rock" plugging products, albeit with tongue firmly in cheek, on the show.

With the anniversary of the Dotto quiz show scandal (also 60 years ago) the question again comes to mind if we will fall into the same trap again or if a new paradigm will be created between content and advertising.

[loose]

Rob, Ain't it the truth. There's still great functionality and utility in paper. What you see is what you get, unlike broadcast and film.
Incidentally, your lawn looks great!!

Loose

[Rob Harris]

Gary,

As a neighbor and older than 50 something, I'm still glad to be working with paper, direct mail and print advertising. This in reference to TIVOing making tv advertising more challenging.

Print advertising seems to be on our kitchen counter and get a pretty good look if there's a bargain to be had!

Rob