May 26, 2005

• certainly the FCC wishes to regulate product placement. think of the fees they are missing out on.
• What's the problem with product placement? Who wants more commercials? It's getting to the point where a hardworking marketing guy can't sell a darn thing these days without someone requiring the performance of a radical wedgedpantiectomy on some aggrieved citizen.
• In the words of Claude Rains, in the role of Inspector (somethingerother), "I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you."
• Fuck commercials and fuck advertising. God bless bit torrent!
• While really over the top placement is often jarring (Hey look, apparently on this version of earth Ford is the sole vehicle manufacturer) the fact remains that no product placement is equally, if not more jarring. I'd hate that moment in a film or TV show when I'd notice the character was drinking from a can of Coke with the label distorted or covered - it would totally break the spell for me. It's like hearing "555" as part of a phone number (though I understand why they need to do that.) As long as it's not too overbearing or unrealistic, I say bring on the product placement...
• Another slant on this is the fact that product placement underwrites the cost of production. As a result I think it logically follows that, if we limit product placement, or make it less attractive for the advertisers, we end up with less money for production and/or higher costs for the entertainment product. Bottom line... you'll see lower quality production or higher costs on things like cable bills and movie tickets... I guess I have to feel that anyone that rushes out to buy a coke because there was a coke glass sitting on american idol... well....in the end, Darwin will win... This is really a non issue...
• Wait. Back in the "golden age of television," lots of things were sponsored by products, and the products figured, sometimes heavily, into the shows. Have people really not realized that product placement is bought and paid for? How dumb can they get? Just because it doesn't say "brought to you by the fine folks at Buick," it makes a difference?
• As soon as the media conglomerates who are de facto running the FCC say, "Hey, we're planning on making more and more revenue from product placements," the FCC will back off on this. Unless it's a product placement of, like, G.W. Bush toilet paper, or something.
• We'd like to think of ourselves as too sophisticated for the direct advertizing strategies of the fifties and sixties but at the same time we don't want advertizing that's too subtle because we'll see it as sneaky and manipulative. We want to be gently persuaded to buy things but only if the things being sold are presented in a way which doesn't insult our intelligence, is cool but not too cool, is visible but not too visible, sexy but not slutty, brightly colored but not too brightly colored, futuristic but respectful of the past, gay but not flaming, thin but realistic and affordable yet pricey enough to exclude the rabble. See how hard it is to market stuff?
• You wouldn't believe how much Pepsi paid mathowie to make "Pepsi Blue" an official MetaFlter in-joke... not really... I just feel like making trouble... BTW, they're talking about us again... The Contagion is a constructed link site. Posting those links is like posting every MoFi link here.
• Ban product placement? Are they crazy? Films will look so barren... and what will writers base their plots on? : ) /rant I used to foolishly think, back when pay TV became widespread, than soon we wouldn't have ads on TV. "We're already PAYING for the programming, ain't we?" Later, the same with movies. Now, we have ads all over cable/sat TV, ads before movie films, and pictures and TV shows with beautifully framed shots of soda cans, computers, yogurt, clothing... And star shaped fries.
• Wow. It's like MoFi's their touchstone.
• What's a "MetaFilter"?
• Do we really need to turn every mention on Mefi into an issue? /exasperated
• Seriously, we should be ENCOURAGING product placement. Do you ENJOY having TV shows interrupted by commercials? Do you find the number "23" to be particularly appealing? (as in the number of minutes in a typical "half hour" program) There's no need any more for commercial breaks. I cite Alias - a good show for its first couple seasons, and HEAVILY paid for with placement. The original pilot, IIRC, aired with no commercials whatsoever thanks to their Nokia tie-in. (And most of the placement is laughably obvious, but that's beside the point) If the FCC tries to regulate this, the only thing they're going to do is hold broadcast television back, and by extension, deal it another blow. If free TV is going to continue to exist in ANY form, the last thing we need is the government meddling and trying to restrict their advertising funding even further.
• I'd say the best compromise would be to cluster ads between programs, as is done in some european countries, but I guess that's too naive.
• "Do we really need to turn every mention on Mefi into an issue? /exasperated posted by tracicle at 09:14PM UTC on May 26, 2005" My guess is that those for those who are posting these back-n-forth links will eventually grow less amused with themselves.
• Maybe for MeFi who's membership is static, but MoFi's is still growing...
• People who watch TV are all whores anyway.
• Back to the topic at hand ... musingmelpomene has a very valid point. Blatent product placement and outright sponsorship of programming was once the norm. And then it wasn't. And now, it looks like it will be again. Nothing outrageous here, except for people's inability to pay attention to history (Vietnam? Wasn't that the running backstory to M*A*S*H?). It's actually very quaint to hear my old Abbott and Costello tape where, inbetween Who's On First, they extoll the virtues of the Camel Cigarette (and their generosity too, shipping crates of fine cigarettes to the troops in Europe). And if we're going to talk deceptive, you're 15 years too late. MTV was (when they actually had music) nothing but commercials. We called them videos, but they were essentially commercials. Not to mention my beloved Transformers (I fear peak energon), GI Joe, or Care Bears (the movie!). Just turn off the TV, and join Harold and Kumar on yet another hilarious adventure in New Jersey. This message brought to you by your friends at Camel Cigarettes. Better living through The truth
• There's some people acting like product placement will cause the number of commercials to decrease. Baloney. The won't stop using commercials. The advertisers will continue to attack you from every angle they can, and the networks and studios won't stop taking money for comercials. Actually, now-a-days you have to pay money for the priveledge of having ads jammed down your eyeballs.
• Geez the FCC isn't moving to ban placement just to make the producers add acknoledgements.
• yeah! What Mr. knick said!
• I agree with Mr. Kickerbocker, too. I probably am naive about product placement, but I like to have people acknowledge when they're selling to me. That's why I stopped reading so-called "women's magazines" like Glamour and Cosmo; they allow advertisers to control (and sometimes even write) their articles. I like more of a divide between editorial and advertising content. Maybe my problem with product placement on tv shows is that it's often so clumsy and stupid. If it were done in a clever, seamless (more "Secret") way, maybe that would bother me less. I think I just said that I want to have things both ways here -- I want them to acknowledge that they're advertising *and* put it seamlessly into the show's narrative. Ah well.
• I think that's the point oklo was making.
• How much do you suppose Coca-Cola paid for this?
• A one-year supply of rubber cement?
• The Big Manager wanted product placement everydamnwhere!
• I'm seeing a billboard . . .
• We’re Beyond Product Placement: Here’s “Behavior Placement”
• “Someone has to pay for our big, expensive stupid, mind-numbing television shows,” Mr. Kring says. Ain't me, I don't watch yer programs. I'm too busy wasting my time on the intartubes!