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."

Comments

Soap Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he needs to do a little more research on the origin of "soap opera".
might I suggest a connection to laundry soap?

Isn't bad...

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:Isn't bad...

[grimmjeeper]

Natural placement of branded items isn't always a bad thing. It can make the story that much more believable. I find that the products with labels that are deliberately nothing like anything in the real world can actually be distracting. With the dialog, it's far more natural for an actor to ask for a Coke or Pepsi than to say "I'd like a cola."

But the best product placement in a movie had to be "Wayne's World". They did an entire scene about how they didn't want to sell out to advertisers. Of course, the scene was shot with as many product placements as possible while they were talking about selling out to advertisers. They even mimicked the commercials of some of the products. Garth dressed head to toe in Reebok gear saying "It's like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that's just really sad." had to be the funniest part of that scene.

Re:What is the border of the creative dept?

[billstewart]

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?

Entertainment Weekly

[ThunderCow]

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.”

I find the opposite to be true...

[HalAtWork]

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.