sleazy product placement on TV show

This week's 7th Heaven featured a sleazy product placement. A cookie
factory sponsor had their product featured in almost scene, in a very
heavy-handed way. Eat that cookie and all your troubles will go away.
I turned off the show.

Tony Calguire...

Does anybody know... do they still make "Hydrox"?

Chris...

So you stopped watching a show for a product that is no longer made. Smart.

Default User...

Huh. According to Wikipedia (usual caveats about accuracy) the phased
them out in 1996.

Barry Margolin...

How about the AOL produce placement on "Smallville"? Would someone like
Lex Luthor really use AOL as his ISP?

If they wanted to place it, put it on Martha Kent's computer -- she
doesn't seem like a techie, so it's believable that she would use this
type of service.

A while back they did this again, over a few weeks, with a brand of
soup.

(I purposely am not mentioning the products' names, why give them any
more publicity?)

I don't mind if a product's label is part of scene in the background,
as part of a _normal_ scene. But these scenes were nothing but
continuing commercials for the products.

Steven L....

It's happened before, even in scripted shows. Writers are being forced
to cite the products in the actual dialogue. ("Hey, Sam, I'm going to
get a Mountain Dew. Be back later.")

The worst of all is cross-promotions--a TV show uses a product placement
to plug a product that is produced by the parent company of that show's
network. Examples:

On one episode of Medium (NBC), there were several references to the
movie "Memoirs of a Geisha," which just happened to have been produced
by NBC Universal.

On an episode of Surface (NBC), Keith Olbermann and MSNBC were featured
prominently--he had a major role playing himself. In return, MSNBC's
media critic had given Surface a good review (while most other reviewers
had panned the show).

Donna B...

Look for more & more of this to be happening. Although I don't label it
sleazy. Instead I label it either effective or ineffective. If it's
creative, fun, in context, it may be effective. If it's forced or awkward,
it probably isn't.

(Actually, some years ago there was a series of commercials about a man
and woman meeting, one of them turning out to have a child, in a
continuing story line. The man was the person who played Giles in
Buffy/VS. The commercials were entertaining, but I must admit I don't
remember what they advertising, which kind of makes them a failure.

Donna B...

But, so many people do remember those Folger's coffee commercials, because
of their creativity.

Just Me...

I guess they weren't too creative or effective, since the product was
Tasters Choice, not Folger's.

Donna B...

LOL, I love it. At least I remembered that it was coffee. It has been years
now!!

Rhino...

We had that same series of commercials here in Canada. There was a bit of
buzz about the commercials I suppose - although the buzz may have been
completely manufactured by the ad agency for all I know - but things really
got out of hand when they started running print ads in TV Guide to tell you
that the next commercial in the series was going to start showing on
such-and-such a date.

I couldn't believe that they were paying to run print ads, which are just
another form of commercial, to induce people to watch a TV commercial! I
know I asked myself who on earth actually WANTS to see commercials in the
first place, let alone that particular commercial.

I suspect that effect was widespread because after the promotion for the new
commercial - and I mean IMMEDIATELY after: just a few days - that series of
commercials disappeared entirely and I've never seen any further 'episodes'
again.

Mind you, the tactic of advertising ads hasn't disappeared entirely, at
least in Canada. I've occasionally seen print ads announcing that the next
edition of the President's Choice Insiders Report is due on such-and-such a
date. Unless I'm mistaken, the Insiders Report is simply grocery store ads,
i.e. it is just a glorified supermarket sale flyer.

And speaking of sleazy advertising, my other pet peeve is ads for products
that brag about the new PACKAGING. This is not to be confused with ads that
tell you about an actual change to the product: I'm talking about an ad that
merely tells you about a cosmetic change to the colour scheme on the
package, not even a change in 'format' (for want of a better word) from
liquid to powdered or whatever.

The young woman in 7th H was previously an evil demon on "Angel", she
was kind of hot on "Angel", not so much on 7th H.)