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Digital Tech and the Re-Birth of Product Placement
pbahra writes "When you think of product placement on television you tend to think of cumbersome 1950s examples where the actor would cheesily turn to camera and hold up, say, a bar of soap—where do you think the sobriquet soap opera came from—to deliver his line. Perhaps to save all of us the artistic murder, the practice was prohibited in Europe, but recently the prohibition has been relaxed and a U.K. start up is offering digital producers the chance to inject products realistically in post production with full directorial control. The problem with existing physical product placement is that there are no clear business plans, and the process is incredibly slow. In Europe, legal constraints prohibit directors from re-writing scripts to include products, so any placement has to be done at the creative stage."
I think he needs to do a little more research on the origin of "soap opera".
might I suggest a connection to laundry soap?
Product placement isn't bad when it works with the story. For example, a horror movie isn't ruined because at a party they have a box of Pizza Hut pizza and are playing on a PS3. On the other hand, bad product placement can ruin character development, for example, showing what is supposed to be a poor family having a top-of-the line Mac in their kitchen.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Because "Captain Mexico" would have been just what they wanted us to do.
According to wikipedia: "The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers ... as sponsors and producers." So it has nothing to do with product placement and predates TV.
Europe has far more strict rules in a lot of advertising-related areas than the US. For instance there is no advertising of prescription medicine allowed in the UK.
This is because your doctor doesn't need to constantly be asked for the next version of valium or wellbutrin or whatever the hell it is.
Lex: "It's a Unix System, conforming to the Single Unix Specification of the Open Group! Unix is a registered trademark of the Open Group, and not to be used as a generic term! I know this!"
Yeah, I watched American TV once.
I will take my sans advertising, licence fee funded, Ofcom regulated, BBC programs every single time.
Paul Newman put a clause in his will that prohibits any "virtual performance or reanimation of any performance by me by the use of any technique, technology or medium now in existence or which may be known or created in the future anywhere in the universe."
So no Paul Newman dancing with a vacuum cleaner a la Fred Astaire.
Which is a good thing.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
And all the better for it.
When adverting no-win-no-fee lawsuits was deregulated, the parasites surged forth from every hole, almost single handedly causing the "heath and safety gone mad" culture we currently suffer.
SO... movies should be written with characters that never drink soda, never go to a Starbucks, never eat anything other than what they harvested out of the back yard. They don't drive cars made by real corporations, ride buses that actually exist, nor wear clothes that look like anything we, real people, wear. And they don't live in actual cities or town, indeed, they don't even live in actual nations.
Product placements are inevitable. The why is to further the story line, to derive revenue, or both. Oh, wait, movies are intended to drive revenue. There is NO OTHER REASON TO MAKE THEM.
You were hoping for art? Try focusing on dead artists who never received recognition nor revenue for their magnificent works. Lots of those. Leave the movies to those of us who seek entertainment, or indulge in appreciating excellent craft.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Smart kid. Obviously, they should put Wolverine on Canada Dry!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Soap operas were not called that because of clumsy product placement. Yes, they were sponsored by soap companies and the content of the shows chased the housewife demographic who purchased the same. However most of them took their dramatic content far too seriously to sully themselves with the kind of idiotic product placement you describe. There were actually producers who had taste back then - just like there are those who have taste today - who would have fought to keep this kind of thing from happening.
And, in fact, if you actually look at these shows, I'd bet you'd be hard pressed to find an example of what you described. An announcer/narrator transitioning from the drama to the ad with "Now a word from our sponsors..."? Yes. A cast member in the heat of a pot-boiling dramatic scene saying something like "I wish I could wash these troubles away with the lemony-fresh scent of Palmolive Soap!" while holding up a bottle? Not so much.
You denigrate what, at the time, was as serious and professional an artistic undertaking as what goes on in dramatic TV now.
That is all.
Back To The Future, with product placements for DeLorean and Mr. Fusion?
Prairie Home Companion, sponsored by Powdermilk Biscuits and the American Duct Tape Council?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Now that more and more of us are finding ways to cut out the commercials, they have to be hidden in the content.
As others have said, I don't mind if they are done "right" (and there is a fine line of course). My main concern is that this will go the same way cable TV did.
First, they rationalize that they need this because there are fewer and fewer eyeballs hitting the commercials.
Next, they will find a way to enforce the 10 minutes of commercials per 1/2 hour of programming.
???
Finally, PROFIT!
We'll finally achieve life as depicted in the Demolition Man (was that parody or just really good product placement?)
I don't much like the American definition of freedom.
Freedom is for individual people. Not for corporations.
I think it's a plan. You display your finest jewels against dark, innocuous material to highlight the contrast.
I think BBC is trying to enhance the glittering wonder of its true gems by playing them off against drek.
The main issue with this theory is I'm having trouble discerning which programming they intended to be gems, but I'm sure it'll come to me eventually.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Did it not occur to you that the reason your television is so low-brow is that it has become a delivery method for advertising?
Entertainment Weekly had an article about a month ago concerning this practice in syndicated episodes of television shows.
http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/07/07/how-i-met-your-mother-reruns-bad-teacher-zookeeper/
From the article: If you’ve watched syndicated reruns of sitcom How I Met Your Mother lately, you might have been startled to see advertisements for very current movies such as Bad Teacher and Zookeeper in episodes that originally aired as early as 2006, long before those flicks were made. The photos here, for instance, are from the second-season episode titled “Swarley,” which originally aired Nov. 6, 2006 — more than four years before Bad Teacher hit theaters. So what exactly is going with this phenomenon? EW investigated, and here’s the scoop.
Turns out that 20th Television — the studio distributor behind Mother — has been selling promotional spots in syndicated episodes to wring even more money out of the sitcom’s already rich syndication deals. Specifically, the feat is accomplished by a partnership with a company, SeamBI, which stands for Seamless Brand Integration and is responsible for digitally altering old episodes with new products and brands.
The company’s CEO Roy Baharav calls SeamBI an “advertising technology innovator” and says that what they do — in essence, monetizing aging television shows by adding new brands and product placement into old episodes — is the future. “What we do is we insert, very efficiently, brands into content in a natural way and in a way that is valuable to advertisers,” Baharav says. “So we find the balance between not compromising the integrity of the content and, on the other end, bring a lot of value to the advertiser.”
Before Reagan, not in the US, either. Today, the advertising costs of prescription exceed their manufacturing costs.
by 2020 actors will just be holding object to be tracked and the TV will render new skins over the top of them (objects & actor :) ). The object they hold in the studio along with the set around them will be just as fake as the industry that pumps it out. You'll never see the same ad object twice and people in different locations will see different cans of soda. It will work like google ads. If you scrub back to watch the scene again, you'll see a different can.
If you do use this tech from this idea please donate money to something good and I'd like a house too.
Thanks
Looking at what has been done with your "freedom" I think ill continue to prefer laws where we try to protect the stupid from themselves.
"The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing." - Arthur C. Clarke ~1980
All restaurants are Taco Bell!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I kind of find it interesting to see when a show/movie comes up with its own brands, it can make the world seem much more realized. They have products that suit their universe. For example, in "The Simpsons", they have many Krusty branded items, or Duff or Laramie, etc. Or in "Star Wars", I would never want to see a Coke or Doritos, or whatever, that's a different universe! Product placements would usually go to the highest bidder, would something like that belong in a show like Roseanne where the family can't typically afford anything but generic/store brands?
Also, don't you find it more entertaining when the writers come up with parodies of actual products, or create brands that only exist in their world? Usually they are comical, satirical, or just creative. I find that more interesting that repeats of the crap that is offensively blasted at you all day. I have a negative feeling associated with seeing real-world brands in TV shows for that reason, and find it very refreshing when I don't notice real-world brands out of the corner of my eye every time I am watching a show or movie. They're distracting no matter how much they try to make them blend in with the scene.
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