Do you find product placement and branded content as troublesome as do it critics? why or why not?

Product placement always appears in television series, music videos, film, and even in games that we're playing. As we seen here in Malaysia, we can see that almost everytime when the advertisement in news at night, PETRONAS will be the most played-ads. This shows that this company has been as influential and powerful as it is now to public as the local oil producer. The advertisement require huge money investments, product placement inside the commercial films is a very highly cost-effective way to gain numerous exposure to the public as it shapes the community.


The movies are definitely be the best commercial for branded products. Most of the movies played in this world has its own sponsor and the brand will be spread to the community, especially women who love to shop and they adore branded items. Last August, my friends and I went out to watch 'The Proposal' and in that movie, most of Sandra Bullock's bags and shoes are from Louis Vuitton. This is one of them:









For me, I don't think product placement and branded contents as troublesome since it can keep our trends of lifestyle. Most of the teenagers in this world love to dress like their idol, just like what they have seen in the movies. Well, i think its true that product placement in the movies have been as influential and dominant as it is now.

Hypercommercialism, product placement, annoying?

Hypercommercialism from what i understand is the excessive use of advetisements. From our text book, we find that " viewers now see 17 minutes of commercials per hour, 52 minutes a night and sit through commercial breaks that average over 3 minutes a piece." (McClellan, 2003) We also find that preimetime show writers are forced to reduce to writing 8 minute acts which is difficult for their story-telling. "An hour is now 41 minutes, and that is a terrible trim" (Holloway, 2005) Obviously we can see that Hypercommercialism has compromised shows 'artistically' as i would put. Advertisements are becoming more and more centralled thanTV programmes we see. TV stations were all about getting the best shows or the hits to viewers, now it seemed like finding a sponsor or advertiser is the main goal now.

I remember when i told my teacher that I wanted to study graphic desinging when i go to college, he who happens to work for the advertising division of a newspaper publishing company said "As a graphic designer (who does advertisments) you cant do things artistically as the way you want, you have to follow the client no matter how ridiculous or how disapproving you think their ideas are" That is life proof that advertisments are becoming a huge role in TV, a little too dominant i think.

As Blendi Salaj said, an author of an article Media Pursuit, "The way we think and what are values are surely come to us through the media, and one thing that has been overly abounding in American media is ADVERTISEMENTS. Everywhere u look you see or hear an ad. TV and radio fill an average of 20% with commercials now days, making it virtually impossible for any of us to not be affected by commercials. Not only are we being persuaded to chose one brand over the other, but we are being pushed to spend, spend, spend – get as deep into debt as possible and buy, buy, buy.
Over the past decades the influence of ads through the media on the society has not only pushed the wrong selfish and materialistic values down our throat but they have also attacked, changed and transfigured the good traditions."

If you ask me if i find these methods of advertising are annoying or not, I would definitely say a big fat YES! so advertisers have adopted a more subtle approach in advertising, which is product placement. how it works is that they cleverly commision writers for films, TV shows and news programmes to include the use o their products to their stories. It's a very subtle approach to advertise their products without having to annoy the audience's heads off with the in-your-face commercials. Plus it is more cost effective than actual advertisements.

In fact, product placement isnt something new, it has already been around for a long time. Take a look at music videos such as The Pussycat Doll's "Dont cha' where they dance in their videos wearing clothes off their fashion line PCD and 'Wait a minute', where the singers use Samsung MP3 players and place them around the subway station. Advertiser play with the psychology that many of us idolise these artistes so, we would also wanna buy what they are using, be it the gadgets or clothes. And how many times have we seen an artist using an iPod or an iPhone in any programme we see on TV? those are product placements done by Apple too!

All in all, as our text book says "critics see damage to the integrity of the media themselves and disservice to their audiences, defenders of hypercommercialism argue that it is simply the economic reality of today's media world" Indeed i agree with this statement, I dont find product placement and branded entertainment as annoying as the critics do, or at least not as annoying as interruptive advertisements during a show. Advertisers 'gotta do what they have to do', they need to earn a living too, and I think product placement is a mutual benefit for both advertiser and consumer. They get to advertise their products as they want and we get to enjoy the show. Besides, i think product placement gives us a more realistic sense of the use of the product rather than outlandish fake advertisements.

References:
http://mediapursuit.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/product-placement-hypercommercialism-and-other-issues-affecting-public-interest-in-america-today/

Stanley J.Baran, Introduction to Mass Communication Media Literacy and Culture (pg. 45-46)

Hypercommercialism & Product Placement: Are They Troublesome?

I remember that there were those days that advertisements in the television popped up only twice for about 5 to 10 minutes each slot during an hour programme. But, in these days, advertisements are slot into the one hour programme twice as more. With having this hypercommercialism, we are watching the programme only for about 40 minutes. And this, I find it is quite frustrating for being interrupt 4 times and each takes about 10 minutes during the one hour programme. So as for the radio. In the radio programme, I notice that with every 2 or 3 songs, there will be a commercial break. When the commercial break has ended or the radio deejays has finished their line, they will mention the sponsors.

No doubt that advertisements are good in the matter of letting us, the consumers, know of what is in the market and that we have choices of product that may of benefit to us. But, being hypercommercialised, it can be a trouble to us. It may affect our decision making in choosing the right product. Especially those who are potentially being influenced like teenagers and youngsters. One of the most watch programme by these two categories that has product placement and explicitly being hypercommercialise is the American Next Top Model. In each episode, the names of the sponsors are brought up at the end of the show as well in each season, the sponsors' name and product are mentioned and display the brand in at least one episode. As the hypercommercialism also happen during the kid's hour (whereby, for example, the time slot children programme being air during the Sunday morning), commercial of a fast food chain are air during the start and the end of a commercial break as it is the sponsor of the programme. It may make the children thinks of wanting to eat in that fast food which we know that it is not a healthy choice of food. However, what does the children know about healthy food and unhealthy food? They just want it anyway.

As for product placement, I find it is more acceptable personally as I think it is a more subtle way of advertising without interrupting the flow of the movie. The sponsors may be putting their product, logo and brand in a movie having the actor or actress to use or display it especially Hollywood movie. Some of the examples are the character of Bumblebee of The Transformers are transform to a yellow Chevrolet Camaro and Sex and the City when the actress received a wedding gown from designer, Vivienne Westwood. To some it may cause an effect on them as they may be fascinated by the display of the product or brand. For example, there was a short period of time that a pendant of a well established designer displayed in a Japanese movie, Nana, there were a lot of imitation of that particular design in the street, be in form of pendant or earring. This brings the idea of there are demands of that particular design.

Reference:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/01/09/product_placement_and_hypercommercialism_pervade.htm

Hypercommercialism - Do you find product placement and branded content as troublesome as do its critics?

Hypercommercialism is defined as the excessive use of mercantilism in media to obtain success and profit (Wiktionary, 2008). Product placement is a form of advertisement, where branded goods or services are placed in a context usually devoid of ads, such as movies, the story line of television shows, or news programs and often not disclosed at the time that the good or service is featured (Sourcewatch encyclopedia, 2009).

Product placement is the latest trend in advertising to make it less advertorial. It is a tendency to move away from in-your-face ads and usually hovering in the background of mini-movies or quasi-documentary vignettes that feature real-life scenarios.

Good examples are from

1. Gossip Girl – an American teen drama television series based on the book series of the same name, written by Cecily von Ziegesar. The series revolved around the lives of privileged teenagers attending an elite private school in New York City’s Upper East Side. Since this series revolved around the lives of privileged teenagers, of course, there’s got to be brand names everywhere.

Exhibit A:

Leighton Meester, one of the main cast of Gossip Girl is wearing an outfit designed by Victoria Beckham, a famous singer and designer.

Exhibit B:

Notice the Louis Vuitton bag.

2. Korean movies and dramas - South Korean popular culture has increased in popularity around the world and even considered as the filter to the western especially American culture as they maintain Asian values and themes. If you haven't notice, South Korean movies and dramas most of them only used Korean products in the background of the movies/dramas. Example of products are LG and Samsung (cellphones), Hyundai cars, etc.

Samsung brand phones used in television drama, Boys Over Flowers (Korean)

For me, I dont referred product placement and branded content as troublesome. Its just another way for brand names to commercialized their products. Hypercommercialism has been a common thing now in music, movie industry and so on and we somehow got used to it. Product placement may most of the time attract our attention and we eventually found ourselves (like myself) googling through the net or browsing through shops and shopping malls to find what attracted us on the first place but its our own choice to make the decision to buy certain product or not. But i think most of the time, when we watched movie in the cinema, we doesn't really bother about the act of product placement because i think they come and go off our heads. :)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hypercommercialism
http://money.howstuffworks.com/product-placement.htmhttp://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Product_placement

Help in understanding the question better

Guys, here're some help for us to understand the question better.

If you read the part of the textbook that I've asked you to, you'll see
that some people are not very happy with product placements (i.e. with
American Idol, you will always see the judges drink coke, in films there
are lots of product placements with actors/actresses using certain
products explicitly). This is sometimes called hypercommercialism. So the
question is asking if you find it as troublesome or annoying as those
people (critics) find it.

From Ms Helena.

Hope it helps the rest of you to post ur blog!

(hyprcommercialism) - do you find product placement and branded content as troublesome as do critics?

Product placement is an advertising technique in which companies pay a fee or provide services in exchange for a display of their products. It is primarily used in connection with the movie industry. One infamous example of product placement occurred in Steven Spielberg's movie ET. Originally the alien creature was supposed to be lured out of hiding by following a trail of M&M chocolate candies. The company which produces M&Ms, however, did not wish to have their product associated with an unproven and potentially unmarketable movie. A rival company agreed to provide a similar candy called Reese's Pieces. The movie became a huge financial success, and the product placement boosted sales of Reese's Pieces substantially.

Brand content to me is about a brand creating content that flows from its conceptual brand idea. Great examples of this include Axe's Gamekillers or Order of the Serpentine where the brand created programming based on the brand's premise of being 'your best first move'.

I dont think that product placement and branded content as troublesome but putting this in the context of Hypercommercialism, it warps society's values while at the same time degrades the environment. The way we think and what are values are surely come to us through the media, mainly ADVERTISEMENTS. Everywhere we look we see or hear an ad. TV and radio fill an average of 20% with commercials now days, making it virtually impossible for any of us to not be affected by commercials. Not only are we being persuaded to chose one brand over the other, but we are being pushed to spend, spend, spend and get as deep into debt as possible and buy, buy, buy. From an early age we are attacked by advertisers and our minds are programmed to think in a commercial way. I believe this has ultimately skewed our perception of reality and it has made our lives not better but rather more miserable.

marketers' planned obsolescence of products. Manufacturers through their marketing advertising agencies, instill in consumers the notion to always buy new not used goods. So we as consumers need to avoid getting sucked into the "suburban consumer grind" of letting "things" control us but instead of us controlling "things".




http://garethkay.typepad.com/brand_new/2006/04/branded_content.html
http://www.scambustersusa.com/articles/Advertising_and_Marketing/hypercommercialism.shtml
http://mediapursuit.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/product-placement-hypercommercialism-and-other-issues-affecting-public-interest-in-america-today/

Product placement and branded contents...as troublesome as critics?

First of all, what is product placement and branded content? According to a business dictionary, it is an advertising technique used by companies to subtly promote their products through a non-traditional advertising technique, usually through appearances in film, television, or other media and often initiated through an agreement between a product manufacturer and the media company in which the media company receives economic benefit. Undeniably, there are a lot of successful product placements in movies. Below are two examples;

Windex, a trademark for a glass and hard surface cleaner manufactured since 1933 and popular in the United States and Canada since the mid-20th century was embedded in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

And a well known delivery service, FedEx, was placed in the movie Cast Away.

With the placements of their products in movies, story line of television shows, news programmes and other medias really bring great success to both product manufacturer and media company. Why? The product manufacturer is able to promote their products via a new way of advertising. We, as audiences, are not aware that while we were enjoying a movie or a simple story line television show, the product manufacturers are actually advertising themselves to us when we saw some branded contents in whatever we were watching. As for the media companies, they gain economic benefits from the agreement they had with the product manufacturers.

So, I do not think that there are any troubles caused by hypercommercialism to us. Companies are just making their own living out of it. It does no harm to us. We, as consumers, buy products that we think are beneficial to us. It has no concerns about huge companies embedding thousands of their products in movies, television or other means of media to brain wash us. We can take those ads as new knowledge for knowing there are such products that are available in stores.

Advertising has become a common thing in our daily lives. As it is becoming more and more prevalent, critics are also increasing proportionally. Kalle Lasn, one of the most outspoken critics of advertising on the international stage, considers advertising "the most prevalent and toxic of the mental pollutants". We are exposed to millions of advertisements daily. It is estimated 12 billion display ads, 3 million radio commercials and more than 200,000 television commercials are dumped to us without us knowing. Hanno Rauterberg (2008) stated in the German newspaper "Die Zeit" that advertising is a new king of dictatorship that cannot be escaped. It is true because, public spaces are turned into billboards and banners of products of all kinds. Even small products can have huge advertisements. So, it is obvious that we cannot run away from hypercommercialism. All we can do is just take it as it is and do not get too influenced by it.

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/product-placement.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/windex
http://www.viralconversations.com/articles/product-placement-movies-00724/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising#Hyper-commercialism_and_the_commercial_tidal_wave