I get very, very aggravated by blatant product placement. An empty Krispy Kreme box in a murder suspect's apartment on CSI just pushed me over the edge, not to mention the obvious weekly promos on Sopranos ( Motorola and SUV scene being the worse so far). There was the lingering shot of a Bed, Bath, & Beyond tag on The Apprentice. There's so many it would take up pages to name them all.

These things just have a way of sucking the life out of a scene because all I can think of is how my intelligence is being insulted by the idea that advertisers think that I'll go out and buy a Motorola because Tony Soprano (who is not even an actual person) said it was great. I might be a little crazy for getting worked up about this, but I just can't stand it. Anyone know if there's a way to stop it?

I don't know, but I'm willing to make all kinds of exceptions where Krispy Kreme is concerned. ;)

Stop using TiVo and stop posting in all-caps.

While I appreciate how annoying product placement can be- I'm not so sure one can really do anything to stop it short of boycotting every product you see 'placed' and letting the manufactureer know exactly WHY you're boycotting them. While you're at it: stop watching the TV show, too.

I have another idea: let manufacturers 'place' products all over a TV show- and then have no commercials for the duration of the show.

ETA: bolding 'no commercials' instead of all-capping it because I think I made Glark mad. Sorry, Glark.

I was talking the to thread author.

American Idol. Need I say more?

What else, the local FOX affilliate actually aired a news segment last night about how the crappy Ford/Old Navy 'music videos' filmed with the contestants are innovative and fresh. Total puff piece.

Though I guess that's what you get when TiVo's so damn popular. Everybody's zooming past commercials now, so companies need to find some way to sell their products.

Short of becoming a major major investor a la Bill Gates, there's no way to stop it. Actors' wages, costs of production, etc. are not covered just because you subscribe to HBO. The prize money and costs for the reality shows have to be covered by someone.


edited to respond to Jael: But what would talk about in the commercial thread?!

The thing I hate about product placement is that it isn't "blatant" enough. I hate it when they show products that have nothing to do with the plot because I KNOW someone paid for them to show that particular shot. I think I'd much rather have someone just say, for instance "hey, get me a Sprite" as another character walks into the kitchen or see a celphone conversation at the mall where a character is actually standing in Bath and Body works. I use products everyday. If the characters were just shown using the products the way real people do, I wouldn't mind.

As a matter of fact, maybe we could go all "product placement" in the shows and NOT have to watch commercials. That way, at least I could get 30 minutes of "show" while watching a 30 minute show.

Didn't they actually edit in Snackwell's boxes into Bewitched reruns a while back? I think that tore it.

I was just skimming the thread titles and all of a sudden, I had the strangest urge to buy a Tubey button...it's the darndest thing.

Ahem. Aaaaanyway, I am of two minds about product placement. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't hate the trend toward using real products in naturalistic ways during episodic dramas. Fact is, people do have cans of Coke and Krispy Kreme and Cheerios boxes in their houses or workplaces. They wear Nikes and Gap clothes, they drive Fords, they use TiVo, they're fans of recognizable professional sports teams. They do not drink COLA, eat Krunchy Kreems and Cheery-Oh!s or support the Dallas Cowpokes, and I always found it jarring to see an obviously faked-up product front and center in a scene.

Now, there have been exceptions -- I thought the roach killer "Die, Bug, Die!" on X-Files was pretty funny (and hey, if it were an actual product, I'd buy it for the name alone) -- but in general, it used to break my suspension of disbelief. I always made allowances for the ubiquity of Mac (vs. Windows) computers on television because of the screen thing, but if Miranda on Sex & the City had had a love affair with her new "TeeVee" service (instead of TiVo), it would've been flat-out annoying. I'd much rather see a box of Entenmann's danish on Tony and Carm's kitchen counter than a white box with blue lettering reading "Englemann's" on it, because you can find that danish in half the kitchens in the urban Northeast and the real thing makes their kitchen look even more real.

On the other hand, I'm not a fan of gratuitous displays or obvious sales pitches cluttering up my programming. I'm looking at you, American Idol, with your pornmercials, Coke couch, extended AT&T Wireless text messaging ad scripting, and the endless, overt plug-fest that takes up valuable singing and snarking time. I don't want to hear why Tony Soprano bought his obnoxious kid that particular brand of SUV, but if I must, let it not be in the actual words of the [product placed] car company's marketing department. I can deal with Christopher showing up with a truckload of tax-free illegal brand-name cigarettes, but I don't want to hear him talk about why they got those brands.

Basically, it comes down to this for me: if it's a blatant pitch inserted into the script, it bugs. If there is a lingering, close-up shot of a character enjoying a particular product and that act does not drive the plot or inform the character, it bugs. If the product doesn't seem "real" to me in the context of the show (hello Luka and your Dodge Peni--I mean, Viper), it bugs. If a cop is sucking crappy coffee out of a 7-11 paper cup, I'm going to let it slide.

In Alias, you can always tell who is sponsoring by which type of car they're driving for the chases. There was a very Ford-heavy episode a couple of weeks ago.

Ugh, yes... the infamous 'Ford Fuckus' pimping. To the point where Marshall was corrupted by being forced to have a line that essentially went something like, 'Oh, they're driving a Ford Fuckus? I've been thinking of getting one of those!'. It was incredibly forced and just so lame.

Seriously, they could do better. Instead of using fake products, couldn't they get sponsorship and plug a real one? I mean, product placement is always annoying to some degree, but I'd rather it seem natural than having it literally be mentioned in the lines and become part of the plot. The sponsorship by a car company doesn't really work, because to properly identify the vehicle they need to either mention it, or show an ungodly close-up of the name on the back. Just... ew, and no.

Survivor was really bad about this for a while, with rewards consisting of Mountain Dew (aka the Devil's piss) and Sierra Mist before they finally cut it out.

There was an ep of "Sex and the City" in its last season where Carrie and Old Guy had a "romantic" moment in an obviously product placed McDonalds. I saw obviously b/c the ep ended with a fade-out of the golden arches. HATED IT!!! As others have said, I didn't mind them having a romantic moment in the McDonalds, just the obvious "EAT AT MCDONALDS!!" bullshit.

Also on Sopranos:

Uncle Junior's TV. They put a Phillips logo on the black tv, but the problem is the Phillips logo is printed on like a white background card, so it sticks right out on the TV. I wouldn't even be surprised if it was a Sony or an RCA TV and not a Phillips.

On Everwood, they had the most ridiculous, overt placement of a Kia Sorrento: the characters said it just like that, KIA SORRENTO, over and over, and they actually described the safety features of the car in detail like they were in a fucking commercial.

And hearing Dr. Abbott extole the virtues of the KIA SORRENTO! and its safety features? Made me change the channel.

(of course, the Ephraim/Madison storyline has made me stay away permanently.)

Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore.

Topic? Product placement sucks.

In college, one of my teachers explained that "the purpose of the programming is to get you to pay attention long enough to see the commercials".

In time, the "programs" and the commercials will probably merge altogether. I just hope all programs don't become infomercials. Those things are cheesy.

Is it me, or would this make a great Pixel Challenge?

On the subject of faked-up products, I've noticed a trend recently. Often times, if a TV character is using a laptop and it's a macintosh, there'll be a sticker or a sliver-colored patch over the Apple logo on the back. Has anybody else noticed this? And does anybody know why? Has Apple decided to stop paying for product placements?

I think it's pretty stupid to try to cover up what kind of product it is. The stickers just draw attention to it. And like a post-it note is going to fool me into thinking that it's not a ti-Book?

The last two words on product placement:

THE RESTAURANT.

My "favorite" part of the recent Ford-tastic episode was when Sydney said something to the effect on "Get in the F-150" and not "Get in the truck" like any normal person would do. The Ford Fuckus episodes were classic, too.

We've done that a few times already. It happens about once every 20-25 cycles.

add-duck, I remember during last year's Friends finale, I saw a bit of tape (the same color of the laptop) over the logo. I noticed this while Ross was typing at his laptop. I thought that was extremely odd.

I also found it odd that (almost) every, single computer in Sex and the City was a Mac. Come on, out of all my friends, I only have three who use Macs. Or are you Mac fiends taking over the world?

Maybe it uses OS XXX.

A long-time product promo plug that bugs me- the AT&T logo on the handset of a telephone. Any time a character is talking on the phone, the logo is plainly evident on the receiver. I agree with other posters; if the product placement makes sense and isn't blaring, it's tolerable. When it comes to shows that are sponsored by a product (Clean Sweep and Clorox Wipes), I try to put up with the obvious promo plug; although in CS's case, I don't think it's a good thing to wipe every stinkin' thing in the planet (case in point - fine wood furniture) with a Clorox wipe.

They used to all have Macs on the West Wing too. (Way back in the day when I actually watched that show). In fact, it seems that way more TV characters than actual people use Macs. My theory is that they just look cooler.

Yes, yes, yes! I think product placement is great. A program, while fictional, is at it's best when it's fairly accurate and as true-to-life as possible. Of course, people drink name brand soda in their homes and CTU goes through a procurement process that in this cycle, makes Explorers and F150s the best buy. I couldn't care less if Ford paid the producers to have the vehicles there--they have to drive something, so why not make it recognizable?

Unlikely, but maybe, just maybe it keeps one more ad out of the show or it's what allowed NBC to pay for the salary increases for the Friends' stars. Everything is a trade-off, of course, but product placement, unless it's done wrong (ala the Kia Sorrento epi above, which just sounds awful) is probably pretty innocuous.

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ITA. What PC laptop looks as cool as the Ti or Al Powerbook? I've also notice in print ads that use the Powerbook, the Apple logo is airbrushed out.

One downside to product placement is that on something like CSI, the companies don't want their product implicated in a crime, so if you see a bottle of Windex in the background, well, it's just Windex, but if you see "Super Cleen-O", it's a plot point.

I always thought you could tell which character was the bad guy if he used a PC.



Please tell me that's a joke.

Didn't Remax freak out after the third episode last season when CSI used similar colours to theirs for a fake real estate agency, that was thought to be involved in a murder?

Oz used Airborne Express in one of their crapass crime flashbacks (tm Aaron, I think). A murderer tried to overnight-ship his victim's severed head, but the alert shipping clerk noticed the blood leaking out of the corner of the package and notified the authorities.

I spend an inordinate amount of time wondering how, precisely, the ad exec pitched that particular product placement idea to the client:

Ad Exec: I know! We'll portray your employees as eagle-eyed crime solvers! It'll be like...CSI:Shipping Desk! Whaddya say???!

Airborne Express: I don't know...it seems risky. Do we really want to alienate the remorseless criminal demographic?

I swear I read a TV Guide article, breaking the news that Mrs. Kravitz was going to eat Snackwell's via product-placement and editing.

I vaguely remember that TV Guide article, and I think they were talking about the possibilities, rather than the actualities.

Now I have to find the TV Guide. I won't rest until I find out.

well.... unless they shop at one of those wacky discount/dollar stores to buy stuff for the sets: at the now defunct Amazing Ray's "department store" that my friends and I used to enjoy perusing, we'd find foreign versions of major brands - for example, Mr. Clean is not "Mr. Clean" in the Czech Republics, he's "Mr. Proper", and a lot of the laundry detergents have whacked out names too.

I can understand why "Mr. Clean" would be "Mr. Proper," screamapiller. In French, anyway, the word for "clean" is "propre." They could have translated it from French to a bastardized English.

Apple seems to have eased up a bit, but when they first started aggressively product placing (about 10 years ago), a producer leaked some details of their contract demands. Among them were that Macs could not be destroyed, used for criminal acts or used by "the bad guys". I've seen the occasional smashed IMac, but I think the "bad acts" clause may still be in effect.

I think One Tree Hill should win a prize for its pimping of Secret Ultra-Dry Solid tonight. Because it's strong enough for a woman.

I don't mind product placement when it's a magazine, or a can of soda or something to do with what the character is doing. I hated seeing episodes of Married with Children or Fresh Prince, where a character would be reading a magazine, and the back page would always be four or five packs of Wrigley-type gum fanned out. Or when one of them would be drinking soda from a red, white & blue can, and it was Shanta, or something equally stupid.

I love that you can instantly tell a character is Eeeeeviiilll if they use a PC instead of a Mac.

PLEASE tell me it was the Glittery Secret that they were hawking? That would be perfect....

Is there an echo in here?

Unfortunately, no. And no tampons either.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching a made for TV movie on Fox Family Channel (shut up, it was a Sunday night and nothing else was on) and one of my roommates walked into the room and within 20 seconds she announced who the sponsers were. How did she know? Because they had at least 4 different close ups on products by that company during one scene of the movie. Blatant much?

I thought it was the Glittery Secret, because they kept calling it the Glitter Bowl.

It was? I must have been blocking it out pretty well then. Go me.

I still want to stick a giant strawberry sticker over the apple on my PowerBook so that I can be just like season three Willow.

I mainly only have a problem when the placement is illogical. Like how, as a college student, Willow had about three different Powerbooks because Apple kept introducing new ones. When characters have a brand new car every year (yes, I know they can lease, but still...) still annoys me, as does never ending new woredrobes and matching shoes that are in prestine condition. Or when characters that complain about not having money are occationally pull tiny things of Ben and Jerry's out of the freezer.

I really can't wait until every teenager on TV has a mini I-Pod to match every outfit, which should be around May sweeps.

Does Phillips sponsor all the HBO shows? I've noticed their TVs on The Sopranos and Sex and the City.