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Would Fonzie Sell You A Lexus?
Faux_Pseudo writes: "In an attempt to flood your field of vison with more advertising the NY Times (free reg)has an article on how "digital technology may be used for the first time to place "virtual" products in scenes of a syndicated television series." If you were taken aback by The Duke selling Coors beer you might want to unplug the TV now." This sort of digital manipulation isn't totally new, but it seems like what we've seen so far is just the tip of the reality-distortion iceberg. As xueexueg puts it, "With any luck we'll see Capt. Janeway ask the food replicator for a meal, and a personal pan pizza will materialize."
And I'm not going to stand for it. I'm going to write my congressman a letter. But I'll be taking an Amtrak train tonight to help a friend do some work on his house. I'll have to write the letter on my Palm Vx; it's portability and functionality are incredible. Of course, on the train I'll have plenty of tunes thanks to my Panasonic portable CD player with 40-second anti-skip technology! And I won't go hungry thanks to Snickers. Packed with peanuts, Snickers really satisfies.
Once I get there, the chores will be quick work, thanks to my new Black and Decker cordless screwdriver, the PowerDriver(tm). It's powered by the VersaPak(tm) system, so if it runs out of juice I can just pop in the spare battery pack.
Is this post your nightmare yet? I can keep going if you like!
Sounds like the story "Remake," by Connie Willis. The future of television is nothing more than endless digitally-created remakes of old movies with digitally-created actors based on famous names, like River Pheonix starring in Casablanca.
Funny thing is, there were endless lawsuits about copyrights. In the story, no Fred Astaire movie could be broadcast because of copyright disputes over the image of Fred Astaire.
Isn't that what we're coming to? Endless copyright fights over the images of famous people? Wouldn't it be hysterical if all the movie houses started snapping up the copyrights to all famous people-- MGM gets the image of George Washington, Universal gets the Sta Puft Marshmallow Man, etc.
Yeah. I'd have to laugh.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
What about companies that paid for their product to be placed in the show in the first place? If Budweiser paid good $$$ to have the main character hold a Bud Light, won't they sue when the re-run shows a Coors?
I _am_ an artist. Believe me, you can get somethings for nothing too, at times. (though at that point people have to _want_ to participate for free)
Anyway, you're wrong. TV could be paid for with subscription models (e.g. HBO, which wasn't running external ads the last time I saw it), taxes (e.g. the BBC), donations (e.g. PBS) and probably a number that I haven't thought of, off the top of my head.
Besides which, there's no rule that requires that a TV show have such high production demands. Sure, it's great to see a miniseries on, for instance, the building of the pyramids wherein an actual, full-size pyramid is constructed with actual human labor over the course of years. But you can do a lot with less than that as well. Shakespeare had no sets, no lighting, no curtains and a handful of costumes and props.
Given the great developments in technology within the last twenty years, good shows could probably be produced with lower costs than ever before.
Sure, there'll still be a need to pay the core people well, but even just increasing the amount of material produced would be likely to make overall costs more approachable resulting in a lessened need for advertising. (if any was involved at all - again, it need not be)
This is kind of why I like foreign movies a lot - true, you're unlikely to see the latest jillion dollar effects, but there's tons of them and many are quite good.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Now, Tivo users will see an icon during Lexus commercials, encouraging them to view TV shows sponsored by Lexus.
So when you're watching The Simpsons, you see an icon during the Lexus commercial, encouraging you to watch the Happy Days marathon, featuring Fonzie selling you Lexuses.
I wanted to work in advertising, but my parents were married.
rOD.
--
Rod Begbie done this, and he's not
Protect consumers? How am I being injured if Captain Picard sips a Pepsi One instead of his standard Earl Grey? Yes, my sensibilities are offended, but are you really advocating a Department of Offended Sensibility?
If you don't like what you see on TV, vote with your dollar. Turn the television off. Read a book. Or better yet, create your own ad-free art. Then, you'll be contributing to a real solution to the problem.
Naw, what the hell am I suggesting? Why creatively solve the problem when we can sue?
One company that does these ads also did the matrixy Eyevision for the Super Bowl and the virtual first down lines too.
I never cease to find amazing the fact that we have the power of six billion minds and a whole fucking planet with which to just kick ass all over the place, and the best thing a great portion of us can think to do is to figure out how to sell sugard watered to each other better.
TV has pointed out one uniquely true thing: our minds can be shaped shaped shaped easily and repeatably. But, I still think that people would spend their time on more noble and worthwhile pursuits if only somene would SUGGEST to them what to do. Solution: just mix in a little algebra with each mention of N'Sync; all they need is to realize the power of their own brains to break out of these stupid chains...
That would explain the cancellation of The Lone Gunmen. After all they used LINUX (or at least Langley and Byers did. . . ). M$ obviously paid Fox to take 'em off the air. . .
(/include)
I was watching Happy Gilmore the other day on network television and I noticed that a lot of the product placement ads were digitial REMOVED. For those of you who haven't seen this movie, it is very funny but the product placement goes WAY overboard. For instance TWO scenes take place at a Subway(TM) restaurant and Happy wears a Subway shirt for the last 40 mins of the movie. The weird thing was that the Subway logo was digitially greyed out (correct spelling - I am Canadian :) ) most of the time as were other ads. Technology is a double edged sword ;), we just have to make sure that consumers don't get screwed out of their side of the sword by legislation.
-Shieldwolf
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
So who's the bad guy? The advertiser or the estates? Well, that's easy, the advertisers are always the bad guy. They're evil by nature.
Anyhow, I understand your offense, and I suppose the mere fact that those speeches are used in advertisements is inherently offensive even if they don't have Dr. King dancing with a vacuum cleaner or pouring beer.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Worse, He could be at the wedding at Cana and they run out of wine so He turns water into Coors Light.
I'm sure the day will come when something like this happens.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Are you referring to Vivien Leigh?
It's been going on for a long time over here in America, too. Off the top of my head, there's been ads using digitally altered footage of Fred Astaire, John Wayne, Martin Luther King and Lou Gehrig (although the last two were tasteful, I thought), not to mention the movie Ben Hur (or whatever that famous chariot race scene was from).
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Well, I certainly see your point, however, there are two different types of uses here. First we have Fred Astaire dancing with the product being sold and we have the Duke pouring Coors Light beer (or whatever it was), and then we have a commercial which uses images of the two famous speeches, but doesn't manipulate the image to place their product in with the person in question. I would have to agree that it might be seen as trivializing Dr. King's speech, which is wrong, but at least he wasn't up there with a bottle of liquor saying "I have Jim Beam" or "I brush with Gleem" or "I play with Bleem" or something equally stupid.
Anyhow, as far as tasteless goes, nothing beats the typical network TV sitcom. Tasteless and unfunny. (Tasteless and funny would be OK... but that's a different discussion). The only thing worse is the sleazy tabloid trash passing as network news "magazines" like Doltline.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The last comment to unplug the TV is the best one.
Seriously-- I don't have cable any more and haven't had it for years now. The occasional time I do happen to see some television only serves to reinforce my opinion that it's all crap. Other people I know have commented that the longer you go without it, the less you want anything to do with it.
So, ditch commercial TV and go play some games (until product placement occurs there too), go biking, do something with your children, or do any one of millions of other cool things waiting out there.
-Roy
I'm not a free-marketer in general, but it's certainly not a right to have advertisment free entertainment. If the placed ads begin to detract from the enjoyment of the show, then it will start to lose viewers. Obviously, there's a sweet spot somewhere that maximizes revenue.
Is there any reason why the people who own the rights to the shows shouldn't be allowed to attempt to maximize their revenue? I don't see how society would suffer as a whole if the practice became widespread. Obviously the viewers lose, but that's the perogative of a seller who has what a buyer wants: in this case, entertainment.
Of course, when advertising and (theoretically) objective news mix, that's a whole different matter.
On the other hand advertising costs money which is reflected in the price of every thing you buy. It's a lose-lose for the consumer who not only has to sit through advertising but has to pay more for the underarm deoderant too.
You forgot to mention one alternative. Collect money for quality programming without ads. Kind of what HBO does huh?
War is necrophilia.
Well my point is this. Those people who can not afford $15.00 per month for cable would be much better off if broadcast TV was like HBO. I am positive the added cost to everything they bought this month due to advertising budget was more then $15 or $25. Every time they bought Milk they paid for those stupid milk mustache ads, every time they paid for toilet paper they paid more.
But really who really cares about the poor in the first place. This is America land of the Dubya. Between the Liberterians, Republicans, and the rest of the corporatist politicians the poor don't count for a pile of crap. They can't buy anything anyway so who cares if they watch TV or not.
War is necrophilia.
There are some interesting low-tech examples documented in The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs in Stalin's Russia .
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Most of the people on slashdot probably don't know people who can't afford cable. I do. Some people I know can't afford the $15/month for basic cable, much less the $10/month for HBO. Their soures of info are the local paper and broadcast tv. And, in their market, the news is paid for by the entertainment.
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The question is, how obtrusive will it be? Will it be ads on billboards in the background, or on the sides of buses as they go by. Or will it be logos on the characters t-shirts?
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I think this would be hilarious. I'd even like to extend it to non-syndicated shows (e.g., Tom Baker's Doctor offering Davros a green M&M instead of a jelly baby), but that's the kicker with syndication. [Side note: anybody else catch the syndication joke in Spy Kids?]
The only way I could see this going badly wrong is when the television images used are recent enough that the joke isn't apparent, e.g., the Duke selling me a Coors is one thing, former Secretary of State Albright selling me a Coors is something else.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Sigh. What I get for posting without coffee...
That sounds stupid since the show in question is Law & Order. To clarify: I wouldn't really have a problem with new episodes doing this. I might have a problem watching reruns of a two-year old episode with a character drinking soda out of a cup featuring a currently-running movie painted across the cup.
Now, for more coffee.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Its fun to watch for subtle product placements:
"Goldeneye"
1. James Bond opens up an IBM thinkpad
2. (hard to see). Near the end of the movie when the base blows up, you'll see a CRT with an OS/2 bootup screen.(I think it's a bootup screen).
But what's not to say that a movie named "Corvette Summer" isn't some commercial by Chevrolet?
Television is a waste of time- it requires no thought, no action, and fails on nearly every count to be mentally stimulating (excepting PBS and the BBC, but including BBCAmerica)- and to top it off, it tries to cram the thing I hate the most down my throat- ads.
The ads got to me, to the point of violence. It was interesting, when I was a kid, to tape an episode of Star Trek DS9 and come to the cold realization that out of that 60 minutes of time, less than 45 minutes of it was the program. Deduct credits and intro, and you're down to 42, if that. And probably less these days. That boiled down to three minutes of clutter and fifteen minutes of ads for beer, preparation H, and cadillacs.
I realized I was getting more out of books, computers, and talking to people that I ever managed to squeeze out of the accursed idiot box. The constant volume shifts between the incessant ads and the blase content were giving me headaches, and the pervasiveness of the marginally talented local news personalities with their overblown egos really started to get to me after I realized that nothing I'd seen on the news bore a direct affect on my day-to-day life. I haven't watched television in over a year- I've made a few exceptions for movies, mostly older films, but in general I've turned off, tuned out, peeled my ass off of the damned couch and done something with my life.
Turning on a television is a waste of energy. Watching the damned thing is a waste of your life- what's going to make for better memories- a brain full of Voyager and Buffy episodes or a brain full of conversation, creative work, and real experience that the television is never going to come close to giving you?
Kill the damned thing- it's completely opt-in, so you have no right to bitch about the fucking ads when you can turn it off and do something meaningful.
as it stands, advertising already has a much more insidious impact on the determination of the content of the shows that we watch than adding a few coke cans represents. putting a pizza hut box in friends is a clear endorsement of pizza hut -- is this honestly worse for its digital fabrication than, say, behind the scenes deals to decide what they should wear on the basis of the gap's agenda, or giving plot vetos to large conservative corporations like P&G?
if you aren't going into this with your eyes open, you're setting yourself up. if you aren't watching with the understanding that TV's job is to deliver audiences to advertisers, you'll miss the point every time.
now, what if dan rather starts putting up fake billboards in 'documentary' footage? that's the real question, and i know it's been done, but what about, for example, changing all signs to read in english when reporting from other countries? where's the slippery slope here? i'm not really sure.
this is pretty effed up, tho, i'll say that much. makes my head spin a little.
god is just pretend.
Already happening - in reverse. Remember one of the networks digitally removed NBC from Times Square during their NewYearsEve2K broadcast?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The term usually applies to movies, where specific scenes have a commercial product (pepsi, coke, m&m) with the camera implicitly focused on the product.
The effect is the same in this case. Specific placement of commercial products in hopes that the viewers buy the product.
This brings some ethical issues to mind? What if the rights to a certain program were sold to another company. Then that company wished to advertise a product that was controversial in some way. The actors/writers/producers that originally worked on that program would have no say in whether they want that product advertised in their work. This would be particularly bad for the actors that are advertising a product which they do NOT really want to endorse. It could give them a bad reputation even though they haven't done anything wrong.
Besides, this kind of advertising is limited to consumer products. Of course, this wouldn't be an issue if advertisers would make ads that people actually wanted to watch.
--
Lord Nimon
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I'm just waiting for the day that Bo and Luke get lost and fire up the General Lee's OnStar system.
Guy's crusing along in his generic car at 80-85 mph, when suddenly a Lexus pulls on the onramp at 45 mph and cuts across 5 lanes of traffic, cutting him off. He slams on his brakes and tailgates the Lexus and tailgates the car down to the next exit where it gets off. At the bottom of the exit ramp the light's red so the Lexus stops. He gets out of his car and walks up to the Lexus. He knocks on the window and it rolls down. Inside is a tiny old woman who can't see over the steering wheel. He says "Excuse me, you cut me off back there..." She looks at him, gives him the finger, and says "Fuck you! I drive a Lexus!" and then floors it. Fade to black, voice over, "Fuck you. I drive a Lexus."
I want to pitch this to Lexus. Think they'll go for it?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Screw advertising, f**k mass media, and start treatng commercial culture for the lowest common denominator, compromised crap it is.
Stick with Do It Yourself media:
Read a book. Travel. Get together with friends and trade stories. Stalk squirrels in the park. Get a border collie and train it to herd Aibo bots.
And then enjoy a 16 Oz. bottle of cool, refreshing Moxie.
Stefan
** You see?
What's next? Digital characters doing ads for real products? Next thing you know Lara Croft will be doing an ad for Pepsi! Oh wait...
--- Rectum?! Damn near killed em'! - Confucius
Make your own doctor/latex glove joke...
Right now we have commercials and entertainment. Commercials serve business (farmers of humans); entertainment serves the people/cattle. People invest max attention in entertainment and min attention in commercials. Business does the opposite of course. Obvious so far? In the name of grabbing more cattle attention, commercials are made more entertaining and entertainment is made more commercial. Natural convergence, yes? In the golden future there will be no commercials, just great entertainment that pushes the business agenda 100%. Pure dreams of wealth and security. Cattle squeezing efficiency will approach 100%. Commerce is war. It's wasteful, ugly, etc. If you have a job then you collaborate. Money grubbing cowardly foolish weakling that you are. Will drugs save us?
It sometimes seems like there should be rights for dead people but once you start having rights for the dead, you run into huge problems. Not the least of which is the inability of people to waive those rights.
I mean it's already bad enough that copyright extends past a copyright holders death. I mean, how is that supposed to benefit the creator.
Many of us think that this is a big problem with giving corporations the same rights as an individual, that individuals have an expiry date wheras corporations can continue to monopolise parts of our shared cultures indefinitely (if the politicians keep extending copyright the way they do)
And anyway, in this case, the thing to remember is that the rights to the actors image is owned by the people with the rights to the image. Sure, the actor may have had a contract for recompense for use of that image but the image itself is not the property of the actor
Rich
Rich
A few years ago I read an article (probably in Wired or another similar mag) that discussed this type of technology and some examples of use.
How weird will it be when there is a big Coke logo in the center of the World Cup championship match field? It won't be on the actual field, but it'll be there on the 'ole TV screen. Will we find it odd that your favorite friend on Must See TV is drinking whatever soda the syndication advertisers dictate? Coke on one channel, Pepsi on another? (personally I'd love to see someone drinking Shasta Orange!)
I guess I view televsion advertisments similar to a computer virus. They come up with new and effective ways to infect our thoughts and we come up with ways to avoid those new methods.
Just like not downloading something from the internet is a sure-fire way to avoid a virus, so is not watching TV or reading any magazines/newspapers (or leaving your house or looking outside) a sure-fire way to avoid advertisments. Unfortunately this method tends to leave you isolated and alone.
Personally, I like analyzing ads and attempting to figure out how they are trying to infect my thoughts. It's a fun hobby. ("And knowing is half the battle!")
The day will probably come when the Futurama inspired "Dream Advertisment" will come to pass. I just hope that they use cool colors when they do.
I don't see a problem with this. I'll just buy the advertised products, and pay for them with superimposed images of dollar bills.
What's the big deal?
As I recall, this seems like the first and perhaps only commercial I've seen where the person is made to directly endorse something.
Milinar
I think that we will be getting more and more intrusive advertising. Banner ads are getting larger. Just look at ZDNet's advertising. On any article there is an ad for Compaq or IBM that takes up most of the page. This is just coming in on TV now. I don't have a solution, but god help the day that push webpages actually happen.
Without the dollars generated by advertising, there wouldn't be any good television programs. M*A*S*H required lots and lots of money: actors, sets, lighting, directors, editors, etc. You can't get something for nothing in the art/entertainment business.
Making television shows takes money. Lots of money. Even if you could find artists to work for free (writers, directors, actors, etc), you're going to have to pay a lot of technicians to set up, maintain, and operate the equipment necessary to make it happen. (cameras, video tapes, satellite transmitters, camera operators, cue card holders, grips, lighting personnel, etc etc etc).
Given this need for money, the end consumer (viewer) pays for it, somehow, no matter what.
TV could be paid for with subscription models (e.g. HBO, which wasn't running external ads the last time I saw it), taxes (e.g. the BBC), donations (e.g. PBS) and probably a number that I haven't thought of, off the top of my head.
Subscription model: obvious
Taxes: You pay from your paycheck
Donations: Obvious
Now, I'm not saying that TV wouldn't survive without all of the flashy F/X and big dollar promotions, but even so, it costs you something to watch televised entertainment.
Great idea, and in fact there's a cheesy boy band with a ready-made name that just begs for such educational enrichment. I mean, just imagine how much kids would learn about math if 98 Degrees were instead known as 1.7104 Radians!
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
In sports especially baseball they already do this. The next time you watch a baseball game on tv keep in mind that some of those ads on the fences and backstop don't really exist.
Ahh, A nice legally binding electronic signature...
you ever seen the ads for Classic TV (maybe its nick at nite)? When they take a clip from a classic show and dub over it to make it modern, and it makes no sense..kinda the same thing here.
This strikes me as the same sort of distortion of an artistic product as the colorizing of black and white movies a few years back. And it will probably be just as obvious. I can't wait for them to start digitally dubbing in dialog. I can just imagine it:
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. But if I did, I'd suggest that we go to see Dr. Marvin Monroe, Marital Counselor."
"We'll always have Paris where we can visit EuroDisney and have a great time with the family!"
Onorio Catenacci
--
"And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
--
"And that's the world in a nutshell -- an appropriate receptacle."
-- Stan Dunn
"With any luck we'll see Capt. Janeway ask the food replicator for a meal, and a personal pan pizza will materialize."
With any luck we'll see Capt. Janeway ask the food replicator for a meal, and Seven of Nine's cat suit will digitally drop off!
That would be some freakin product placement!
There are two issues here. One problem for the sellers of the ads, and then there's the moral problem everyone wants to talk about.
So, the problem for the sellers of these sponsored placements is, the placements aren't a limited comodity like standard commercials are. You can only have X number of minutes of commercials in a television program before the audience tunes out. Advertisers pay big bucks for those minutes on hit programs like 'Survivor' BECAUSE they're buying a scarce product (the attention of a large audience). What heppens if that product is no longer scarce? It's value decreases. For example, 'Law & Order' has many scenes involving people sitting at desks and tables. Will each and every table have a can of Coke or Pepsi on it? Will the advertiser pay for each and every placement? Will they pay by the minute or by the placement? Or will they buy the category 'every table scene, so that every scene that has a table in it will have a Coke can on the table?
If the producers are not careful, all they'll achieve with these new advertising slots is to drive down the cost of advertising, and it may get to the point where their total revene from product placement is less than their total revenue from the higher priced advertising slots (which they'd probably have to phase out or risk some kind of viewer backlash.
The second issue relates to viewer response to product placement, and as the atticle states, some tests have already been performed, but the risk advertisers run of alienating consumers with poor product placements is far greater than the risk they ran of producing poor quality or unapealing treditional ads. This issue would also affect the production company being paid for the placement, because the product and the programming content would be tied closer together, and associated in the viewers mind, since they can't simply get up and go to the kitchen for another beer, durring an ad.
Theres also the more moralistic issue of 'currupting' quality programming content, for example, what would happen if 'Seinfeld' in reruns, started drinking Gatorade instead of YooHoo? What about if Drew Carey started drinking Lebatt Blue instead of Buzz Beer? Would the audience object? I guess only time will tell.
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
And, there's even a non-registration version of the story to be found here.
Somehow I doubt Janeway'll order a pizza tonight, since it's the series finale, but maybe if she does a dream sequence, she can order lots of branded food.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
This is wholly different than a creative person agreeing to a "product placement" deal with a corporation. This is butchering something after it has been created. While we can all laugh at this being done to shows that we consider less-than-artistic, I don't want to see quality programs (MASH, ER, The Sopranos, or even The Simpsons) subjected to these heavy-handed edits.
Before any of you Young Republicans start spewing the 'capitalism is good' speech, art is better. Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, and Schindler's List won't be improved by digitally adding products to the scenes and their impact could be lessened on an entire generation.
That's one of the most convulted pieces of double-talk I've read since... yesterday. "Appropriate manner" my ass!
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www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
But under the DMCA, use of the food replicator would violate Pizza Hut's intellectual property rights to the recipe of Personal Pan Pizza.
Or maybe not, if it's used for liscensed, official marketing purposes.
___________________
The American Dream went to hell in a handbasket when someone decided that "The Customer" was King, and the customer beli
At what point is it a lie to do such a thing? At what point is it legally fraudulent? How can we make laws to protect consumers, without resorting to a "Ministry of Truth" in Washington that decides what reality is OK for people?