The Decline of Product Placement?
Tom Lee says product placement is wearing out its welcome:
We have continually-evolving defenses that let us tune these distractions out. A decade ago I might not have noticed the subtly-placed Aquafina bottle in the medical examiner’s office in The Spirit; now, trained by decades of carefully turned-toward-the-camera product labels on network sitcoms, I couldn’t help but see it. Although I’m sure that its presence still made some small, brand-reinforcing impression, it’s a minute one compared to the success that this technique must have first enjoyed. And, in this case, it was coupled with a healthy dose of resentment at Aquafina for its commercial intrusion into entertainment I’d already paid for.
It’s certainly true that there’s some kind of declining returns involved in something like this, but I’m a bit skeptical that this level of awareness is all that widespread. This particular instance of product placement is going to be totally unsuccessful largely because The Spirit is so boring. But I bet if Nantucket Nectars paid to have their lemonade be Blair Waldorf’s favorite beverage, that a lot of Gossip Girl fans who love Leighton Meester’s outfits but can’t afford them would start buying the stuff. Indeed, one of the big problems with product placement deals being everywhere is that it’s now difficult for creators to actually give characters these kind of attributes. But lots of people just aren’t that media savvy. I’m told there are even pro wrestling fans who doesn’t realize it’s fake.
37 Responses to “The Decline of Product Placement?”
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January 1st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
The ‘mark’ article you’re referring to is a mirror of an old Wikipedia article that got deleted.
January 1st, 2009 at 12:47 pm
It’s like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that’s just really sad.
January 1st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Did you notice in Disney’s WALL-E that the title character’s “boot up” sound just happened to be the same sound a Mac computer makes when it starts up too. How tricky is that!
January 1st, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Not only that, but millions of Americans voted for a senile warmonger and an airheaded beauty queen.
January 1st, 2009 at 1:39 pm
<i.Did you notice in Disney’s WALL-E that the title character’s “boot up” sound just happened to be the same sound a Mac computer makes when it starts up too. How tricky is that!
That’s in the category of Matt’s comment about it being “difficult for creators to actually give characters these kind of attributes.” The start-up sound could have been product placement or it could have just been an inside joke.
January 1st, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Nobody thinks that wrestling isn’t fake. The naifs think that there are some people who think that wrestling isn’t fake, and feel sophisticated as a result. See Madonna.
January 1st, 2009 at 2:00 pm
There seems to be some sort to hypotheis here that product placement effectiveness depends on a subliminal effect, and that the effect is diminished by viewer “savviness”, i.e., that viewers who notice the the specific product and brand, and understand that its presence in the piece is likely the result of pay-for-placement, will be less influenced to buy the product.
Is there any evidence for this hypothesis?
January 1st, 2009 at 2:19 pm
The funny thing is that when I was a kid I was always annoyed that characters in TV shows/movies never used real products. They were always drinking cans that said “cola” or “beer” on it and it would momentarily knock me out of the fantasy. Be careful what you wish for I guess.
January 1st, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Funny you should mention Gossip Girl- Vitamin Water’s placement on the show has become a long-running joke for us guilty-pleasure commenters on snarky sites. Every episode, it’s either visible or featured- a Hamptons party with a Vitamin Water bar! A character requests a certain flavor VW for a hangover!
It’s ludicrous, but so is the show (enjoyably).
January 1st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
One of the smartest things I ever heard said about professional wrestling was said by a 9-year-old, who was a big wrestling fan, who told me “Wrestling isn’t fake, it’s staged!”
January 1st, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Trust me, no pro-wrestling fan over age 13 doesn’t know its fake. There was a, shall we say, “not all there” kid in my high school who was a huge wrestling fan. Wrote a column about it for the school newspaper that was 100% credulous of the storyline characters. He also knew darn well it was fake. He enjoyed it the same way lots of people enjoy soap operas. Even “marks” know its fake these days.
January 1st, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I’m not conscious of exactly which brand of automobile is featured on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but I’m always irritated every time the camera lingers over the vehicles when there’s world-saving to be done. Whenever that happens, it means the director had to design a shot to incorporate the placement, regardless of whether it advanced the story.
Strangely, I’m not irritated by the several pauses during the program when the plot stops entirely and products are advertised openly.
January 1st, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Every episode, it’s either visible or featured- a Hamptons party with a Vitamin Water bar! A character requests a certain flavor VW for a hangover! It’s ludicrous, but so is the show (enjoyably).
I actually do try to drink a particular flavor of Vitamin Water as part of my hangover cure. Maybe I need to seek a sponsorship deal.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Product placement works well when it is integrated into the story; it doesn’t work well when it just hangs there and the camera lingers on a logo for no apparent reason. I’m thinking of the episode of the Office where Dwight (and later Jim) get into Second Life, or the one where Michael gets an Ipod for the holiday office party. Of course, I have no idea whether the companies even paid for the placement, but it certainly worked effectively because it was part of the story and the interaction between the characters and the product was believable.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:03 pm
I remember a time when people on sit coms drank cola in a white can with a blue stripe (even though they lived in penthouses).
January 1st, 2009 at 7:10 pm
It occurs to you that while it was probably smart for they in sit-com land to spend their money on pricey real estate (as opposed to delicious name brand cola) a mid-tier apartment and more tasty foodstuffs would have offered a more pleasing quality of life.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I think that is a inside joke referring to the origin of pixar. Pixar was originally a part of Lucasfilms special effects, but Steve Jobs bought the company in 1986 after he left AppleInc and gave it its current name. Jobs continued to be the majority owner of Pixar as well as the CEO of it until it was bought by Disney in 2006, even though Jobs returned to AppleInc as CEO in 1997.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:22 pm
The look of the “female” robot in WALL-E and the sound being like the MAC were no coincidence or joke. They wanted to make them reminiscent of Apple products. It was a very unabashed product tie-in, though obviously not product placement. Simply put, there are direct ties between Apple and Pixar.
There’s a little stuff in here about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall-e
January 1st, 2009 at 10:34 pm
I’d have to say “duh” with respect to this.
I mean The Simpsons had an episode where France declared war on the US, the Eiffel Tower opened up so that a missile could fly out, and the missile had “Intel Inside” written on its side, correct with the Intel logo. Do you seriously think this was a product placement by Intel?
January 1st, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Grumpy’s right about Terminator. But it has its advantages. The “Goodbye to All That” episode was entirely sponsored by Dodge and prominently featured a Dodge Ram truck. But that allowed the show to run several extra minutes with less commercial interruption, allowing for an entire extra scene. If product placement allows that without devoting the entire extra minutes to the product, I can’t see anything wrong with that.
And if you’re a truck freak, which I’m not, it was a nice looking truck which can hold lots of M-16’s, Barrett Sniper Rifles, and assorted other gear, as Derek and John demonstrated while spending thirty seconds or so loading stuff into the truck at the beginning of the show.
Plus we had Derek tapping the onboard GPS as a lead-in to a talk with John while driving - that was fairly subtle.
However, for the nit-picky fans, hilarity ensued, as fans located reflections of the cameramen doing the filming on the blindingly mirror like finish of the truck. Oops!
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:12 am
One of the dumbest product placements I saw was in “Swordfish”, where Hugh Jackman is supposed to be playing a down-and-out computer hacker driven by poverty to alcoholism and a dead-end job looking after oil pumping stations- and he opens the fridge to reveal a shelf full of Heinies.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:54 am
The wrestling fans I know who claim its “real” are focusing mainly on the violence, I think. They’ve been to the matches and seen the smashes, heard the whapps of arm against body. It’s real in the sense that if it were directed your way you might experience survival issues.
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:17 am
This is just the product placement version of the standard pooh-poohing directed towards organizations like Adbusters: “aw, give it a rest, nobody pays any attention to advertising.” If that’s the case then an awful lot of gigantic corporations are flushing a whole lot of money down the toilet, whether it’s for Super Bowl spots or product placement.
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
I suddenly feel like watching “Repo Man”.
January 10th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Matthew, how much did Nantucket Nectars and Gossip Girl pay you to get mentioned in this article?
February 17th, 2009 at 1:25 am
Good Day. Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.
I am from Belarus and learning to speak English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “To write an effective resume, you have to learn how to write powerful but subtle advertising copy.”
Thank you very much ;-). Tito.
March 12th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
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