Product Placement
In my final piece this afternoon regarding product placement, I wanted to provide some excerpts from my research on the subject of acceptable and unacceptable placement. This project started as my Master's thesis work (see original submitted version here--today is the one year anniversary of my thesis defens...ahem...consultation), and I have continued editing the manuscript, eyeing eventual publication. Let me know if you have any thoughts, queries, or disagreements.
Product Placement in As the World Turns
In my manuscript chapter entitled "Not So Nice 'n Easy," I wrote about an example from As the World Turns, in which a longtime character, Margo Hughes, notices gray in her hair. Hughes, one of the senior officers of the local police station, talks to her mother-in-law about it at the police station and gets a recommendation to use Nice 'n Easy, which she does. Later, in the same episode, we hear how satisfied she is with the results...
While there was some attempt to use the Nice 'n Easy product integration for humor, viewers and columnists did not find the disruptive audio references to the hair product amusing in the least.
Continue reading "Product Placement and Soap Operas" »
I think product placement and good television can co-exist in cases where the product doesn't get in the way of the text. It should be a utility to further the story, first and foremost, or to add realism to the drama, not a way to insert commercials into the text. If it provides some of the latter, great for business, but the $$$ deal can't be put first, at least if companies don't want to annoy their audiences.
However, as I wrote about in my thesis work, the worst that can happen is visual combined with reference, unless it is done in an ironic way (and that only works in rare form, so marketers don't think you can just pull an out by being funny with the brand and then laughing all the way to the bank).
Implicit Contract
C3 Alum Alec Austin did a significant amount of work while he was here looking into the history of product placement and what makes product placement look particularly good or bad. For one of the internal studies for the Consortium, entitled Selling Creatively: Product Placement in the New Media Landscape, Alec writes about the long history of product placement in American television, the problem with industry and critics alike pretending as if product placement is new considering its central place on radio and in early television (i.e. the Texaco men, the origin of "soap operas," etc.), and the need for a more nuanced way to understand what successful product placement would look like.
Continue reading "Product Placement: C3's Work on Implicit Contracts and Reverse Placement" »
In trying to catch up on my reading this week, I noticed that C3 Consulting Researcher Grant McCracken continues his look at product placement done poorly over at FX, this time writing about a conversation about buying a GMC as part of the dialogue of the show.
Grant first writes about a character in The Riches driving a GMC car, noting that GMC both appears throughout the show and is advertised at several points during commercial breaks. He says, "I don't like product placement, as I have argued here, but as long as we TIVO through the ads this is perhaps forgivable."
However, it is the insertion of a pitch about the GMC into dialogue that becomes the blatant offender here. Grant writes:
Holy ****. This may very well be the most egregious example of commercial interference ever registered in our culture. Recall that my original objection to FX was that they put an ad for one of their shows in the corner of the screen for the duration of an episode. I thought this was a little much. But to put a sales pitch in the middle of the dramatic action, and to reduce a dramatic genius like Minnie Driver to a product pitcher, this is insufferable.
Grant ends with a call to action, wondering how the audience can discourage such blatant pitching in the middle of a show and questioning what commercial force might be held responsible for such a deal.
Continue reading "The Riches and Product Placement Gone Wrong" »
The theory is that Friday Night Lights just hasn't grown a bigger audience because most people have never watched it. More than most shows, it does seem that I don't find people peripherally familiar with it; the people I talk to who have seen it absolutely love it, and everyone else says they have never watched. The show feels real in a way that few primetime shows have, and there's one element in particular that FNL does better than any other show on television: product placement and integration.
The Applebee's integration into FNL is the best use of product integration I've ever seen. The restaurant is a prominent part of the story at many points, as one of the key characters works as a waitress there and it's the de facto place to stop in town for a nicer meal, if players or their parents aren't going to the local burger shop or the "Alamo Freeze." Actually, the "Alamo Freeze" is a Dairy Queen, and you can easily tell that's the case, complete with partial shots of the Dairy Queen sign and Blizzards on the menu. My understanding is that it is even filmed at a Dairy Queen in Austin, Texas, but that they've chosen to make it a localized restaurant instead.
Continue reading "The Applebee's in Dillon, Texas" »
The latest news coming out about an online series ties into writing we've been doing here at the Convergence Culture Consortium about online video, branded entertainment, and soap operas. Procter & Gamble's Tide brand will be the sponsor of a new broadband series through GoTV Networks, a 10-parter called Crescent Heights.
The series, written by Mike Martineau of Rescue Me fame (see this post relating to Jason Mittell's writing about the FX series and how he feels it serves as a hypermasculine soap opera), will be available not just through Tide's Web site but also through mobile providers as well.
Continue reading "New Tide-Sponsored Online/Mobile Video Series" »
Yesterday, I was walking into the lobby of Five Cambridge Center, where the Convergence Culture Consortium offices are located, when a newspaper on the front desk caught my eye. Now, the subscription to this Wall Street Journal was for one of my neighbors on another floor of the center, so I could only glance at the headline, but it involved two things of interest to me: our partner, MTV, and deodorant.
Of course, I guess deodorant is of the interest of many of the C3 readers, but I am particularly interested because of my fascination with the history of product placement, and particularly with the history of soaps and everyday items as product placement. Considering my interest in soap operas, I often emphasize the fact that this was a whole genre (or format, depending on your perspective) which was set up under the notion of product integration or branded entertainment, two phrases that have become quite the buzzwords for the industry.
Continue reading "Gamekillers and Branded Entertainment" »
In trying to push forward with some much-needed updates to the blog this week, something else caught my eye: Kimberly D. Williams' in-depth article from Advertising Age on the season finale of Lonelygirl. The article is not openly available from Ad Age, but TelevisionWeek has the story available here.
Don't click on the article, though, if you don't want to read spoilers, because they give away a pretty big chunk of information on the online video series. Guess they aren't quite as sensitive to the spoiler issues we've been discussing here recently. If you missed it, see our posting from last month on the Harry Potter book spoiler controversy here and here.
Continue reading "Lonelygirl15 and Advertising Models" »
How is the hype and bluster surrounding "branded entertainment," "transmedia storytelling," and "product placement" endangering real and meaningful developments in actually making these concepts a real part of the industry?
People who read our blog here regularly know that we are quite keen on these concepts. But, of course, we come at it primarily from a fan-centered perspective, and that fannishness has a lot to do with artistry as well. We are excited to know about how product placement might help escape from the confines of the simple-minded advertising models currently in place; how transmedia storytelling might help media properties better tell their stories without the confines of a particular medium; and so on.
But the over-hyping of some of these ideas cause great problems. See Wayne Friedman's take on product placement. He talks with producers about product integration, and he points out that many of them are sour on it? Why? Because of the instant desire of the industry to turn everything into a stream. You can't just have something appear on a show; it has to take over the show. We still haven't tackled the art of subtlety. And if you can't make a quick and simple metric out of it, what use is it?
Continue reading "Producers, Writers, and Advertisers Harmed by the Hype" »
Over the past few days, there have been a couple of interesting ideas batted around by C3 consulting researchers and alumni on a couple of issues that I thought might be of direct interest to the wider C3 readership. With all that is happening in the fan fallout from Harry Potter, the repercussions and new business deals stemming from the upfronts, and all the issues we've been covering more regularly, I thought that pointing the way toward a couple of those pieces might be beneficial.
One is an issue that I've been following from afar. I've never been an avid Simpsons viewer, although I appreciate its place in popular culture. It's not even that I have any aversion to The Simpsons, but I've just never become a regular viewer. Nevertheless, I've been paying attention to the promotion of The Simpsons Movie, both in the transformation of 7-Eleven Stores to Kwik-E Marts and in the competition for deciding which Springfield is the home of the Simpson family.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Jason Mittell had published a piece on the Springfield competition. Now, Grant McCracken has weighed in on the Kwik-E Mart cross-promotion.
Continue reading "Reverse Product Placement, The Simpsons, and the Value of the 7-Eleven Brand" »
FX continues their interesting model of single-sponsored shows, the latest of which will be for the premiere of their newest series starring Glenn Close, Damages.
Close, coming off a heralded performance in season four of The Shield as Captain Monica Rawling, will star in a show about lawyers.
This time, the sponsor will be Cadillac, who will not only be the sole sponsor of the show and provide a commercial-free season premiere, but whose cars will also be integrated through the series.
This combination of product placement/integration with single-sponsor content is yet another hybrid of a model that seems to be fairly consist for FX season and series premieres. It seems to be a model that works well enough to continue returning to it as special events for important episodes, but we have not seen it port over to whole season deals for any FX shows of yet.
Continue reading "Cadillac/Damages Latest Example of FX Single-Sponsor Model" »
Several of the researchers in C3 have just finished or are in the process of finishing their Master's thesis projects, which means many of us now have the prospect of graduation staring us in the face. Here at C3, we have had the great opportunity to not only work academically as researchers while graduate students but also to interact with the media industry and work with folks at our corporate partners on a variety of initiatives, meaning that a majority of the people coming out of C3 are interested in maintaining a relationship to both academia and the media industry moving forward.
But, as job hunts loom on the horizons and as colleagues start to land jobs elsewhere, we all have to consider what it means, in both the industry and academia, to come away with expertise in issues such as understanding fan communities, transmedia storytelling, new advertising models, and the variety of other focuses that C3 research has taken.
Continue reading "Media Industry Jobs in a Convergence Culture" »
News came out about a week-and-a-half ago as to an interesting new marketing and transmedia storytelling plan that will be launched across Warner Brothers and through the CW Network with Toyota.
John Consoli with MediaWeek reports on a marketing initiative for CW drama series Smallville which will last for five weeks across several platforms.
This marketing and storytelling initiative across platforms began with the CW episode of Smallville that aired on April 18 and will last through the show's season finale, which will air on May 17.
This cross-platform initiative is being called Smallville Legends: Justice and Doom.
The marketing part of this initiative is called a "content wrap," a model launched by CW this semester which Consoli explains is "advertiser-aligned content that takes the place of typical 30-second TV commercials during programming, targeted to appeal to specific demographic audiences." In other words, the story on the main show is supplemented by original advertiser-based content that airs during what would conventionally be commercial breaks.
However, this Toyota campaign is the first time this wrap has launched around a single advertiser across multiple media forms, driven by the online game, which relates to the final five episodes of the show this season.
Continue reading "Smallville Legends: Justice and Doom: Integrating Content and Advertising Across Multiple Media Platforms" »
The creators of the Lonelygirl15 phenomenon are going to try to capitalize on the strong interest they generated with their series on YouTube by launching a European "social networking spin-off," as it was called on MarketingVOX, called KateModern.
The series of 2-to-4-minute Webisodes will air on Bebo, a popular European social networking site and will feature a teenage female from London. The plan is to create an interactive community surrounding the show in which, for instance, puzzles will be introduced that fans will get credit for solving on the show; if no fan solves these puzzles, the characters on the show will instead.
Lonelygirl15 has been an Internet phenomenon, and the MarketingVOX story points out that it is the most subscribed-to YouTube channel by this point, "boasting over 91,000 subscribers and 10.2 million views."
The show will be officially called Lonelygirl15 Presents...KateModern, and Deborah Netburn with the L.A. Times reports that it will be "the story of a Lonelygirl-esque 19-year-old British college student, her friends and the mysterious dark forces that permeate her life (the same dark forces featured prominently in recent Lonelygirl episodes).
Continue reading "Lonelygirl15 Spinoff KateModern Integrated with UK Social Network Bebo, Funded by Product Placement" »
Last week, the New York Times had a great article about the potential upcoming battle between the writers guild and the entertainment industry as the writers unions for the Writes Guild of America, both East and West, will come down to what reporter MIchael Cieply calls "what are expected to be exceedingly difficult negotiations with the conglomerates that own the networks and studios."
According to the article, the major points of contention for the negotiations between the union and the industry this time around will be "the expansion of nonunion work by units of large media conglomerates like Viacom and News Corporation, and the way artists will be compensated for their work on the Web, mobile devices and other technologies still falling into place."
WGA West President Patric Verrone said that 95 percent of Hollywood's writing jobs for television and major films were covered by guild writers in the mid-1980s, as compared to about 55 percent now as companies use nonguild writers for reality television, animated TV, and other shows.
Continue reading "New York Times Previews Potential Upcoming Battle between Writers, Conglomerates" »
Yesterday, I wrote about a discussion from the 2007 TV Upfront Summit in New York this past week, sponsored by Advertising Age and TelevisionWeek.
Today, I wanted to elaborate on another interesting round of discussions that came from that conference, specifically centering on a conversation of audience engagement, commercial ratings, and the Nielsens.
Measurement has been the major question on people's minds over the past few years, both in how accurate current measurements are and the accuracy of what is being measured. WIth the Nielsen ratings sample being considered by many as an inevitably flawed number, yet a number the industry remains reliant upon for the whole economic structure of both broadcast and cable television, questions have swirled around both ways Nielsen can better measure viewership and also around potential alternatives.
Further, others are questioning the use of measuring whether someone has their television set on or not in the first place and whether there are better ways to measure engagement that take a more qualitative look at valuing the kinds of programs that keep people more involved, favoring serialized television in its various formats, among other programming types.
Continue reading "Commercial Ratings, Measurement Accuracy, and Engagement" »
Reality television is particularly open for product placement and even product integration. We have written about this here in the past, but the deal struck last week between major advertiser Procter & Gamble and reality television show Mo'Nique's F.A.T. Chance on Oxygen is yet another example of how this partnership works.
The reality show, now in its third season, will use P&G products in a lounge for its casting calls, and P&G products will be used as sponsors in on-air vignettes and online video as well. The deal is part of P&G's attempts to reach African American women with Cover Girl and Pantene.
For those who don't know about the show, F.A.T. stands for "fabulous and thick," and the show features women who emphasize that a "plus-size" look is beautiful. In the TelevisionWeek story from Jon Lafayette, an Oxygen representative called Mo'Nique's audience for the show "passionate, loyal and highly involved."
Continue reading "P&G, Product Placement, and Mo'Nique" »
The verdict on 2006 is final, at least according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, and it looks like the Internet and spot television in Top 100 markets were the major drivers.
The report was that advertising spending on the Internet increased 35 percent, while Internet ads in the Top 100 spot TV markets rose 9.1 percent, followed by Spanish-language television and outdoor programming, both at 8.1 percent.
According to the official press release, "Growth in a number of media remained flat or slightly down" with a list including business-to-business magazines, coupons, smaller spot TV markets, network radio, and local newspapers.
According to the study, dramas overtook situation comedies for the most appearances of "brand integrations," largely due to the growing number of dramas as compared to sitcoms on the air. According to the press release, "American Idol featured 4,086 product placements, with more occurrences than any other program, a 17% increase over 2005."
Continue reading "Ad Sale Increases Driven by Rise in Internet Sales, Top 100 Spot Sales, While Product Placement Numbers Drop" »
Anyone see the C3-inspired article by Todd Wasserman with BrandWeek on reverse product placement this week, a process through which brands from a fictional world are made available as products in the "real world." The article stems from research from two of our affiliate research, Ilya Vedrashko and David Edery. The discussion of reverse product placement, particularly in games, has been a focus here at C3 throughout our formative years, as the quotes from Edery and Vedrashko indicate.
Edery, who now works for Microsoft's Xbox division and who has written about the idea of reverse product placement for Harvard Business Review, while Vedrashko is an emerging media strategies for Hill, Holiday.
The phrase "reverse product placement" is an interesting term to use to label the practice of marketing items out of a narrative world.
The idea of taking something out of a narrative world and making it available in the real world surrounded media marketing from the beginning. Wearing the clothes or buying the brands that one sees on screen or even reads in a book, as my colleague Ivan Askwith is fond of reminding everyone, stretches back to the work of Charles Dickens, and that desire to buy the brands of your favorite character is the drive behind product placement.
Continue reading "Reverse Product Placement and C3 Members' Ideas in the Popular Press" »
A new mobile phone deal struck between Sprint and the hit television series 24 will bring episode previews to cell users, according to a deal announced a little over a week ago. After each episode airs on Monday night, clips from the next week's episode are made available for those who use the Sprint video services Sprint Power Vision or Sprint TV.
A variety of other planned cell activities will help promote the link with 24 as well including trivia games in which a prize will be offered--a trip to a Florida "covert ops" training camp.
In return for the deal, Sprint receives product placement, as Sprint products will appear on episodes of 24 throughout the season.
Continue reading "24/Sprint Deal Provides 24 with Ancillary Content, Sprint with Substantial Product Placement" »
Back in August, in the fourth issue of this year's Journal of Popular Culture, there was a great essay on product placement and looking at the unpaid placement of the Wilson ball in the Tom Hanks scenes on the deserted island in Cast Away.
The essay examines the rising business of product placements in film and television and looks at the Wilson example to try and figure out how much a product placement of that sort would have cost Wilson and also a qualitative analysis of the effects of this type of brand exposure.
This piece, "Unpaid Advertising: A Case of Wilson the Volleyball in Cast Away," is written by Dr. Michael L. Maynard, who is Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism, Public Relations and Advertising at Temple University, and Megan Scala, a doctoral candidate at Temple.
Continue reading "Wilson, Cast Away, and Product Placement/Integration: Maynard and Scala's Essay" »
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip has been the location of a lot of interesting discussion this television season--about the importance of "high-end" educational and financial viewers versus "the masses," about the importance given to prestige programs versus programs that draw major audiences, etc. The Aaron Sorkin show has been renewed while many shows have fallen, both by drawing more affluent viewers and by having a prestige factor, even as the latest episode was the lowest rated yet.
Being a major fan of The West Wing and always a follower of sketch comedy, I was interested in this show from its very beginning. And, while I'm disappointed that we don't see enough of the actual show per episode (what a great transmedia project releasing an actual episode of Studio 60 from time-to-time would be!), the show does have some intelligent and insightful (and funny) commentary about politics, religion, and Hollywood.
Particularly interesting to the research we do here at C3 is a recent discussion on the Nov. 27 episode about bolstering Studio 60--the fictional sketch comedy show, rather than the real thing--with product placement to make it more profitable and to help offset the potential of cutbacks. Considering how controversial these questions have been in the "real world" of the entertainment industry, it was intriguing to see them as a plot point on the show. The major points of contention has been from the writers, who feel that product plugs are placing new forms of revenue that carry with them new responsibilities for writers that they are not being properly compensated for.
Continue reading "Studio 60 and Product Placement" »
The Burger King Xbox games featuring "the King" are now available in Burger King outlets for $3.99 if you buy a value meal. Joystiq has the scoop, along with reviews of each of the 3 games.
For those who watch a lot of teen dramas and/or teen detective shows, you may have noticed a hot new character breaking onto the scene in the past couple of weeks, apparently branching across networks. I'm talking about Chili's, the bar and grill well-known for its ribs jingle, among other things.
In the past few weeks, regular viewers of Veronica Mars has seen Chili's figure prominently into scenes shot in the food court of Veronica's college. In last night's episode, she even approached one of her professors who was purchasing food at Chili's and offered her a rib, which Veronica didn't want to take because she didn't want to get her hands dirty, a scene that had resonance with the story itself since Veronica felt that the teacher's offer to recommend her for an internship was a payoff to keep her quiet about her catching him having an affair with the dean's wife.
I got an e-mail from one of my colleagues here at the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, Neal Grigsby, who said that when he ate at a Chili's not long ago, there was an all-out CW cross-promotion, with ads for The CW on Chili's menus and coasters that asked various trivia questions about shows on the new network's lineup. Neal's summary: "Guess they're going for Total Chili's Awareness in the teen set."
Continue reading "Chili's Everywhere: The Restaurant's Aggressive Integration Campaign on Veronica Mars and The OC" »
According to a news article/commentary yesterday from Advertising Age's Madison and Vine Web site, video consumption online has grown 18 percent over the past seven months, with the average consumer now watching slightly less than 100 minutes of video a month.
The Madison and Vine piece looks at the trend of advertising to follow this trail, with major reallocations of traditional television ad funds now going to new or integrated media. While it isn't surprising that this growth in consumption leads to an influx of advertising revenue supporting online sites with video content, the article highlighted or alluded to a few important implications that greatly affect recent discussions we've had here on this blog:
1.) Transmedia content--With digital streaming poised to become increasingly profitable, those companies who integrate online video content as part of their entertainment package are at a particular advantage. If companies have bonus content available for download or streaming online, they can easily package ad sales that include advertising or sponsorship of both the traditional content and digital content that may become increasingly attractive to advertisers, who would benefit from having a strong association with dedicated fans who follow the product across multiple platforms;
2.) Product placement--As the Madison and Vine article points out, those companies who are paying for product placement now have added incentives, since more and more television shows are becoming available for digital download or streaming. While traditional ads or the ads that run on television are not present in a lot of these digital presentations, all product placements are--indicating that placing products on a show is the smarter investment long-term.
3.) Promotional films--Creating branded video content subtly promoting a product, such as the famed BMW Films campaign, is proving itself to be an attractive option for reaching customers turned off by push advertising. Increased video streaming gives advertisers more of an impetus for creating compelling content that viewers want to stream or download and gives creative independent talents a chance to shine...It's smart marketing and less offensive to commercial-sensitive viewers.
It's hard to find much fault with Madison & Vine's final call--for marketers to "take heed" and take advantage of an audience "hungry for programming." For advertisers and for media content producers, digital video not only provides a chance for revenues and a chance to provide consumers what they want but also makes possible an environment that better enables transmedia content and new forms of storytelling.
Thanks to fellow C3 media analyst Geoffrey Long for directing me to this article.
Several posts in the last couple of months on our blog have been dedicated to product placement and product integration in television programming, but the news that received some play last week of a Cover Girl novel crossover reminds us once again at how well books can cover product placement as well.
Cover Girl, along with parent company Procter & Gamble, will be working with Running Press, part of Perseus, to promote Cover Girl throughout several references in a new novel called Cathy's Book, written by Jordan Weisman and Sean Stewart. The book will be inspired by the principles of alternate reality games (ARGs), and the authors previously worked on "The Beast" and "I Love Bees."
The novel will include references to Cover Girl lipsticks and eyeliners, among other things, and Cover Girl will promote the release of the novel. According to a post by Cory Docterow at Boing Boing, the novel included references to makeup brands but were only changed after a deal was put in place with Cover Girl.
But, it didn't take long to get the non-profits after them. Commercial Alert, a non-profit organization dedicated to "protecting communities against commercialism," have contacted book reviewers across the country, requesting that they boycott the novel because of its product placement.
Apparently, these organizations have particular problems with this book, as it is being marketed to teens. The problem here is probably not as much that the products are being used but that the company is receiving extra money for that placement. While the company has made the distinction that the book clearly called for a product there and that the deal came organically from that, Commercial Alert is not quite so excited.
The publishers, Perseus, quickly came to the book's and the authors' defense, with CEO David Steinberger saying that "calling for a review boycott is a form of censorship." In this case, I have to agree with the authors. While I understand Commercial Alert's sensitivity to commercialism and have seen plenty of great works ruined by product placement, this is a little different. If the product placement is organic, I don't think it's a problem, especially since we live in a branded world. And the book seems to have much more of a point than simply advertising Cover Girl. Steinberger says that the authors have a right to include these placements, "incorporating real-world elements consistent with their vision."
Further, I agree that the worst approach of all is attaching reviewers instead of engaging in public debate about product placement. What Commercial Alert is trying to do is end the debate before it starts, to eliminate the other side completely and not allow the book to get reviewed. And that's more dangerous to our rights as Americans as the commercialism of Perseus Publishing could ever be.
Thanks to Joshua Greene for passing this along.
Not that long ago, I had a discussion with a seasoned veteran of television writing who was not happy with orders from above of blatant product integration in the show that person was writing for.
It's been a common and growing complaint, so much so that the Writers Guild of America East recently released a statement calling for regluations of integration and inclusion of actors and writers both on the process of deciding appropriate uses of product integration and also to be included in the benefits.
According to a story by Jon Lafayette for Television Week, the writers called for a distinction to be made between "product placement" and "product integration." In this case, they are arguing against the use of blatant product placement versus natural product placement, an issue that has been close to our reserach over the past year, particularly through the research of my C3 colleague Alec Austin.
Some television programs allow for product integration, using the WGA distinction, more than others. Particularly, it seems that reality television shows or sporting events are not as badly hurt by the extensive use of sponsor names because it doesn't seem as absurd. Both are already controlled environments and in fact gain their narrative drive from that contrived situation, whether it be a game or a reality competition.
However, in fictional dramatic or comedy series, product integration can easily destroy the viewer's suspension of disbelief in a way that detracts from viewer involvement and the perceived aristry of a show.
Yet, episodes of Seinfeld and Sex and the City prove that episodes can have a particular brand name or product involved deeply in an episode without detracting from the power of the show, if it is not something imposed on the writers but instead something the creative team is a part of from the conception.
So, I don't see the WGA's call for inclusion as a threat but rather a great benefit to the future of effective product placement. When creative teams are saying that they see the economic reality of product placement but only object to it being done poorly, it seems they've found a mantra that the entire industry should get behind.
Two appearances for the XBOX on the C3 blog in as many days: Water Cooler Games reports that the King will be a playable character in several new promotional games:
Market research company Greenfield Online is preparing a plan for Burger King to sell promotional Xbox 360 games in their stores. The games would apparently riff off 'the most popular game types,' adding the super-creepy Burger King character to an action, fighting, and racing game; customers would have the option of purchasing one for $4 with any Value Meal.
Now, given that the only thing that has intrigued me about the XBOX 360 thus far is the presence of the Burger King in the photo-realistic Fight Night: Round 3, this is an interesting tactic.
On top of which, given the price of XBOX 360 games, who's really going to pass up games -- even ones that are almost pure advertising -- at $4 a pop?
Update: Apparently there was some concern that this was an unsubstantiated rumor, but the cease-and-desist that Kotaku received seems to confirm it.
A handful of events seem to reveal a growing objection to product placement as a survival strategy in the entertainment industry.
Via TV Squad, a report that actors and writers are protesting product placement:
"Both groups are pushing for regulations, or a 'code of conduct' on product placement in television and movies. At the very least, they want more money for not only being storytellers but also advertising copywriters.
While Pepsi cans and Fed Ex trucks in the background are all strategically placed, the writers and actors have a problem when the powers-that-be require them to work products into a story or even write an entire story around a product."
Add to that an NYT article which C3 Advisor William Uricchio just passed us ("In Parody Video, Writers Ridicule Placing Products"):
A Hollywood union is stepping up its campaign against the embedding of brands and products in entertainment and, as they say in the movies, this time it's personal.
The Writers Guild of America, West, is making fun of the interweaving of sponsors' wares into films and TV shows with a so-called viral video that is scheduled to appear this week on a union-sponsored Web site (productinvasion.com). The video mocks Tyra Banks, the host of the popular reality series "America's Next Top Model," which features in its episodes the Cover Girl brand of cosmetics sold by the Procter & Gamble Company.
Tough times for the advertising industry?
Leave it to Pixar...The creative computer animation company now housed in the Disney family caught my eye with some of their shots for their upcoming film Cars, starring such creative forces as Paul Newman, Owen Wilson and...Larry The Cable Guy.
What caught my eye in particular was a detail that borders somewhere between parody and product placement. The situation got me thinking about what IS product placement...
The Pixar car has written across the tires "Lightyear" in the same font and placement as Goodyear Tires. For those familiar with Pixar's history, you will know that the "Lightyear" is a reference to the first Pixar film, Toy Story, in which one of the primary characters was named Buzz Lightyear.
The detail shows Pixar's creativity in every corner of their work, but it also bolsters the idea that Goodyear is the big name in tires...When can parody be product placement? Would a company be able to get a company to shell money out to parody its name in this fashion, when no direct product is even placed in the picture?
Has anyone witnessed the new advertising campaign by Chrysler, whose Chrysler 300C is used in Harrison Ford's upcoming thriller Firewall (Richard Loncraine, Warner Brothers)? The company has a Web site dedicated to the film and has taken full-page ads in entertainment magazines telling viewers to "See the Crysler 300C in Firewall, in theaters now. Go for the ride of your life with the Chrysler 300C."
Is this a good example of getting the most bang for your advertising buck by building on product placements with advertising for that product placement, or is this bordering on going too far?
This week's EW featured two powerful and interesting ads, I thought, from various perspectives.
The first comes at the beginning of the magazine and is a two-page spread advertising all of the various Law & Order shows on NBC. They have all the characters from all three L&O franchises stretched across the page, appearing as if they are in the middle of an investigation. Behind them is a facsimile of Times Square, with several media properties particularly noticable--a Virgin sign, Loews Theatres, Planet Hollywood, Marriott, Kodak, and Novotel, with two huge ads in the background for the iPod and Universal's King Kong.
The ad is a success in two ways--both as not just showing transmedia but as showing crossover within the various television shows of a particular media property, L&O, with all of the characters appearing in one scene, despite being on their various shows. Further, it has product placement within an advertisement, something that is more and more possible but has only been utilized occasionally. I don't know if it has ever been done quite so well as in this ad.
Similarly, I thought the idea from L'Oreal Paris was interesting. They provide a pullout ballot for the Golden Globe Awards, with four L'Oreal ads appearing on the backs of the ads featuring Beyonce Knowles and two models. I've already torn the ad out and plan to use it for the Globes, so it was at least somewhat of a success. This may feel a little more gimmicky; I don't know. But it's an effective way to make it feel as if the ballot is "brought to you by L'Oreal."
The idea of cool hunters is not a new one, but one form of cool-hunting rising in popularity is finding out what tunes celebrities download to their iPods. A new form of marketing at least somewhat based on reality, the iPod playlists are simutalenously an advertisement for Apple's iPod and iTunes, the cool celebrity who is releasing the list, and all of the cool musicians on the list.
Case in point: in this week's Entertainment Weekly's "The Must List," a regular feature in the magazine, they list the top 10 things you must see for the week. Number three on the list is the playlist of Fred Armisen from Saturday Night Live.
Is this just part of an iPod fad or a potential new avenue in advertising revenue, product crossover, etc. One would suspect this only works as long as you can be sure this is the authetic feeling of the celebrity and not something he or she is solely paid to say, but the trend is certainly getting the attention of consumers with placement like this.
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