Talk:Product placement

Anybody sure the movies mentioned were actually paid for product placement (I'm thinking especially of "The Gods Must Be Crazy") I took the liberty of removing examples section entirely, since this seems unlikely to be product placement, Mac and Me seems to be an actual McDonald's production (hence not paid product placement) and the one remaining example seemed to contribute little, as other examples are cited above it.)

Controversy

How about adding Casino Royale? The movie has been under fire because of the blatant usage of Sony Vaio laptops, Sony-Ericson mobile phones, and Sony Blu-ray equipment - especially since this is the first Bond movie to be released by Sony pictures. Also, every vehicle bond used in the movie was a Ford-owned brand (Ford, Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover).

Bad examples

I don't believe that the following is "product placement":

Product placement on television dates to its earliest days. Soap operas earned their moniker because they were brought to us by the soap companies. Classic shows such as Bonanza were filmed in color because the show’s sponsor was RCA and they wanted to sell more TV sets. Cigarette companies took advantage of the practice as well. The good guys smoked, not the villains so more cigarettes could be sold.

The above relates to marketing and adverts, but is not product placement. Asa01 07:26, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

The important distinction here is that there is sponsorship, where the company underwrites the cost of the show (this is how soap operas got their name - they were funded by firms such P&G); brand integation, where the product is woven into and integral to the plot, e.g. the GM Camaro in Knight Rider, or the Absolut bottle used to discretely hide parts of the naked model on a billboard in Time Square, used in Sex in the City; and, product placement. Product placement falls into two discrete categories according to ERMA the product placement association: one type of product placement is done primarily to lower the cost of producing video content; the second type is featured video content where money is exchanged in order to get a product a preferred location. Most viewers tend to be aware only of the more obvious product placement, but there is a great deal of product placement that goes relatively unnoticed.

Alistairdavidson 23:43, 27 April 2007 (UTC)alistairdavidson

Reverse Product Placement?

Pop Idol started out in Britain, with no (obvious to me, at least) product placement. Then American Idol came out in America, and all the judges had these HUGE "Coca-Cola" cups placed prominently on the desk - obvious PP.

But, now, ITV1 (the channel that carried Pop Idol originally) is showing American Idol, but with the Coca-Cola cups blurred out.

I think that's worthy of note in the article, but I don't know of any other examples, and I don't know specifically WHY they've blurred it, and I'm not sure of my ability to put it in proper encyclopaedic language, with no "weasel words" and things.

Can anyone else help? iPhil 00:29, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

The only reasons I could think of are that either they chose not to have product placement for Coca-Cola (perhaps they have agreements with other competing companies that would conflict with it?), or they're taking a subtle pot-shot at the Americans. Or else Coca-Cola didn't want to pay whatever fee the station wanted in order to air the product placement. Runa27 05:42, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

The reason that the coca-cola cups were blurred out in the UK versions of American Idol, is because Ofcom guidelines currently prevent product placement within UK broadcast shows under the "undue prominence" section of the Ofcom code. This code doesn't appear however stretch to film broadcasts.

Anyone mind this addition?

The blatant Cadillace placement in Matrix: Reloaded. -Kasreyn 05:47, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Intend to revise and edit this entry

I've been researching product placement for years (see for example my new website Brand Hype), and will be working on revising and editing this entry over the next few days. I look forward to community feedback. Mattsoar 18:39, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Self-contradictory and just plain confusing!

The intro should be shot as it is right now. I'm about to show you why...

The intro states (bolding mine, by the way): Product placement appears in plays, film, television series, music videos, video-games and books, and is a relatively new idea (first appearing in the 1980's). Yet in the first post-intro subsection, we get this tidbit: A very early example of product placement in film occurs in the 1949 film Love Happy, in which Harpo Marx cavorts on a rooftop among various billboards and at one point escapes from the villains on the old Mobil logo, the "Flying Red Horse".

(And shouldn't that be "1980s", on a side note?)

Now, the intro also defines "product placement" as: occurs with the inclusion of a brand's logo, or a favorable mention or appearance of a product. This is done without disclosure, and under the premise that it is a natural part of the work'. Most major movie releases today contain product placements

Hey, I thought... oh wait! What was it that it said a little before that? Oh, yes: Product placement (PPL) is a promotional tactic used by marketers in which a real commercial product is used in fictional media,

You can't have it both ways people. What the heck is that "without disclosure" business supposed to even mean, anyway?

And if it's exclusively a promotional tactic used by marketers, then in order for the 1949 example to be genuine "product placement" (or "product plug", rather, as the current article defines it), it would have to have been basically sold to the Mobil company, would it not? That's the only reason I didn't edit that portion of the intro.

Seriously, folks. That's from the first three paragraphs. This needs fixing, and I'm not sure how to do it in many cases. : \ Runa27 06:23, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Without disclosure means, essentially, not telling the viewer they're watching a commercial, and instead allowing them to mistakenly assume that the product was chosen the way props are otherwise assumed to be chosen: for whatever artistic, creative, or story value which they lend to the project. Product placement allows the viewer to assume that the product was chosen either randomly, or due to its creative or artistic merit, rather than due to, say, a big fat paycheck from the product's manufacturers...

Of course, the line is awfully blurred these days. A lot of commercials make no effort to inform the viewer that they're watching a commercial; many of them are like 30-second stories or action scenes. Sometimes they even eschew having a bit at the end where they tell you what the product is, or what it does. Heck, for some drug commercials, they show weeks of commercials which have nothing but scenes of people smiling and dancing and they never even tell you the name of the product, or that it's a drug rather than, say, dancing lessons or tuxedos being sold. When a price is mentioned, or a place to buy, or loan repayment terms, or some such, I would consider that to be disclosure.

I don't know what you mean regarding the Marx bros. Mobil advert. The purpose of the advert was to link Harpo (who was a positive figure associated with laughter and good times, being a comedian) with the Mobil logo and mascot. The reason product placement works is because of the associative tendencies of the human brain. Two stimuli experienced at the same time, even if they actually have nothing to do with one another (such as Michael Jackson and Coca-Cola), become linked. What marketers discovered was that if you liked Jackson's singing and associated it with good times and happiness, and if you saw Jackson drinking coke, and saw coke logos on him as he sang, you would come to associate coke with good times and happiness as well. Essentially, the associations "rub off".

The trouble is, this is an unconscious process, because the conscious mind is rational and skeptical. If you walk right up to someone and say "you should like coke because Michael Jackson drinks it", they could easily show why this was nonsense: their conscious mind is alert and paying attention, and they are easily able to analyse the claim and reject it as groundless. It's been shown, however, that while viewing television, a person's conscious mind can be easily distracted. One method is the constant fast cutting of commercial television, usually a cut every two seconds or less. This keeps the mind off-balance and unable to deploy any analysis or perform any critical thinking on something it has seen before the next image begins and brings with it another image to critique - overload. The end result is that some images are able to sneak by without being subjected to the conscious process of analysis at all. It is at this point that the image of Michael Jackson drinking coke forms an irrational but effective association.

Did this help any? Kasreyn 07:15, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

link spam on this article

Just so you all know, Wikipedia is not a vehcile for advertising. I have just removed a number of external links to promo agencies and alike. This is completely unacceptable to have such links in this article. Please don't add them back without good reason. -- malo (tlk) (cntrbtns) 02:57, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Product Placement in Fight Club?

"The movie Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, bites the hands that feed it by depicting acts of violence against most of the products that paid to be placed in the film. Examples include the scene where the Apple Store is broken into, and the scene in which Brad Pitt and Edward Norton smash the headlights of a new Volkswagen Beetle. However it is arguable that the negative portrayal of these ads is cancelled out since they are in fact still paid-for product placements within the film."

I don't seriously doubt that the products used were in fact paid for, despite the fact that the part of the theme of the film is based around being anti-corporation and such, but is there any verification that the products were paid for in this case? I believe some of the brand names (such as Starbucks) were actually mentioned in the book, which was made before the movie. -68.114.154.249 04:28, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Early examples

(Sorry if i have repeated some of the above). Didn't _It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World_ have a slew of Chryslers? (I seem to recall some detective shows having "Automobiles provided by Chrysler" in the credits.) _Moonraker_(?) had a scene where Bond is driving down a mountain, and at each switchback the camera lingers on a billboard. 7up is the one brand I recall all these years later. In 1969's _The Italian Job_, The Minis were the stars, but I think Fiat might be in the credits. The Fiat Dino and other Fiats were conspicuous at times. (I suppose it is not product placement if the company is mentioned in the credits.) In 1968's _2001, A Space Odyssey, were Pan Am, Hilton, and ATT product placement, or more like the Coke bottle in _The Gods Must be Crazy_? Oh, yeah, and Microsoft all over _The Island_ really made me want to hurl.

Flintstones in the 60's

If we're mentioning early not-quite-product-placement ("greekized"?) examples, we might want to include Welch's Grape Juice on "The Flintstones" in the 60's. In accompanying commercials, baby Pebbles calls the product "Woo woo gape do" (or something close to that). And then in an episode or two, we hear her make a request for "Woo woo gape do," the same as in the commercials, and her parents comment that Pebbles "sure loves" that grape juice. danwWiki 20:05, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

is it really product placement?

is it really product placement if the creators of the "art" in which the real-life products are being showcased, aren't using the products for advertising purposes or for personal income, but rather just prefer to use real products for artistic purposes and do use real products when the oppurtunity arises? shouldn't there be a motive behind using real products in tv, film, ect.? this directly applies to the south park reference of using dr. pepper. as it was stated by matt stone and trey parker that they wanted to use diet dr pepper on an earlier episode because it would have been (at least to them) funnier than a fake product. ...Patrick (talk, contributions) 04:54, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Baz Luhrmann

I know Baz Luhrmann is known for placing Coca-Cola imagery in his movies, praticulary Strictly Ballroom, however I'm not sure where to mention it in this article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mhrmaw (talk • contribs) 03:44, 26 January 2007 (UTC).

Ricky Bobby

I really think that Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby should be included somewhere in this article. I know that this certainly isn't a place to include every instance of product placement ever included in a film, but I think this is the first movie I've seen that included an actual commercial in the middle of the movie. It must have been at least thirty seconds long - not to mention the references to Wonder Bread, Big Red, Taco Bell, Domino's, KFC, PowerAde... Ministry of Silly Walks 03:32, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

While I am not a fan of Will Ferrell at all, I saw Talladega Nights and was apalled at the amount of product placements. The in-movie commercial was unbelievable and I truly believe it should be mentioned in the article. Draknfyre 23:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

any ideas?

Ok, this will be very vague, but hear goes: I seem to remember a certain company offering to pay music artists for every time their product/company name was heard on the radio during one of the artists songs...i also remember hearing about an artist who made a song with the product/company name repeated ten times followed by "now where's my cheque?". does anyone else know what im talking about and who/where/when this was? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.4.74.65 (talk) 17:12, 29 April 2007 (UTC).

image add?

would it be ok to add this image? Canislupusarctos 10:17, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Herbie anyone?

A mention of the herbie movies must be added as it's probably an example of product placement: VW Beetle! The film transformers was supplied with General Motors cars which should be mentioned as a new example in 2007.