Your best/worst examples of product placement on tv?

Richard Dower

Product placement is a given in movies and has become much more noticable in tv shows in the last number of years. While from a financial standpoint you understand why it's done.

However, there are some WOEFUL examples of cringey and blatant product placement that stick out like a sore thumb and sorta ruin and frustrate fans.
Recent example was last nights Fringe, nice closeup shots of a Ford Focus...and yes, they come with a dashboard reversing cam :rolleyes:

One blatant and terrible one i remember was season 1 of 90210, Annie and Dixon driving and they LITERALLY hold up a can of Dr. Pepper to the camera....... :rolleyes:

Can you give any more?.....any good examples that seemlessly blend, YT vids are welcomed

ED E

Saw that in fringe.

Bones is 10x worse. Massive prius placements(the characters all stunned that it can park itself, thats the third time they've advertised them in the last ~8 eps. Two weeks ago it was microsoft cloud services. Loads of other stuff too.

Criminal minds and the ****ing ipads makes me rage.

Colmo52

Hawaii Five-O

Microsoft/Bing

If you dont know what bing is then Google it.

Richard Dower

^ that's brutal!

RolandIRL

Kia in Nikita....even brought into the plot...remember Alex's dream episode? was very subtle :rolleyes:

FouxDaFaFa

Bones is pretty bad alright, I remember one ep when the characters actually watched a trailer for avatar. And then dicussed avatar. And went to see it. :pac:

Chuck can be pretty blatant with cars, windows live and subway. Good lord, the amount of subs you see people going around with.

Mad men does a good job of blending its placements. Even when the product forms a part of the storyline, like with Heineken, it makes sense because the characters in the show are ad-makers.

pooch90

Colmo52 wrote: »

Hawaii Five-O

Microsoft/Bing

If you dont know what bing is then Google it.

Hawaii five-O is terrible for it, cars, phones-everything really.

KeanSeenan

How I met your mother tends to be pretty bad with product placement.

dtfo

In the first transformers movie when the transformer is coming out of the pool and the little girl is holding a huge my little pony teddy, reminds of the simpsons episode when bart and lisa were news reporters and their show was taken over by that crap cartoon - the mattel hour something

expectationlost

both himym mother and fringe used products placement at the time of the deaths of key characters, bones is the worst, its not just product placement anymore its product ...crashing!?

the himym race through new york when ted used bing maps was logical

titan18

Loads of bad examples of bad product placement.

One of the best though imo was the Modern Family episode where Phil really wants an iPad.

.SONIC.

chuck and subway. bit over the top

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OViS82tn5hs

Biggins

This weeks episode (series 6, episode 20) of Bones was VERY blatant about advertising.
They showed Bones parking a Honda Car and took time out to show the incorporated computer gadgetry in order to CLEARLY advertise the car.

pajunior

titan18 wrote: »

Loads of bad examples of bad product placement.

One of the best though imo was the Modern Family episode where Phil really wants an iPad.

At first I thought that was awful but then I realised that it made complete sense with the character.

Easily the worst http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1ODy5U406Q&feature=player_embedded

Could actually be a 30 second commercial on its own if you cut out the alcoholism.

Barna77

Cellular, biggest Nokia ad

Clareman

There was an episode of How I Met Your Mother a couple of months back that was just a massive Microsoft ad, from bing, to mobile, to Xbox. The Vampire Diaries is bad as well, but that's just all shows on CW I think.

JohnK

Worst I ever saw was a good few years back (90's) on home and away when the apple imac first came out. Not content with having a character buy the product and showing it on screen they had to throw in a conversation between two characters where one of them excitedly listed all the specs of the machine and what it could do. To this day it stands out to me as the most blatant product placement ever.

KeanSeenan

Also on Himym they digitally add in products for the repeats.

S.M.B.

The use of Apple products on 30 Rock is an example of product placement done well imo.

PhiloCypher

Supernaturals Bobby Singer aka Jim Beaver using an Ipad in the latest ep .

tvnutz

PhiloCypher wrote: »

Supernaturals Bobby Singer aka Jim Beaver using an Ipad in the latest ep .

Didn't think that was product placement,they never use the word ipad or apple. there are no logos shown on the thing,it could have been any tablet. And Bobby was actually slagging it off and annoyed that it was not a computer.

Clareman

Alienware kit can be seen in The Big Bang Theory the whole time, you can't miss the Alien head on the laptops.

Also, Windows logos all over the place in The Mentalist, especially on the back on monitors.

Venom

Hawaii Five-O is the worst for product placement in a very long time.

Apple iphones and its camera function getting lots of screentime.
Microsoft phone 7/Bing/putting "bing it" in the shows dialogue.
Long weird ass tracking shots of certain cars.

Wossack

all the dell and cisco stuff in 24 iirc

once you became aware of it, its there an awful lot

amacachi

Getting really sick of all the Apple product placement lately. I know it's down a bit in films and may also be down on TV but it's not just background stuff, whole fcuking episodes revolve around it.

expectationlost

the microsoft placement has got to be the worst, it in so many shows so much, like last nights castle

filthymcnasty

not tv, but the movie Castaway barely has a scene without the DHL (delivery company) logo somewhere.

J-blk

The Season 7 episode of Smallville, "Hero" which is a 45 minute ad for Stride gum was beyond bad - the whole episode plot revolved around the "freak of the week" gaining powers from the gum and everything... Only remembered it today after seeing a "worst Smallville stories" article on IGN:

http://ie.tv.ign.com/articles/116/1165413p1.html

expectationlost

filthymcnasty wrote: »

not tv, but the movie Castaway barely has a scene without the DHL (delivery company) logo somewhere.

it was fedex, it was only at the start and it made sense, try harder

filthymcnasty

expectationlost wrote: »

it was fedex, it was only at the start and it made sense, try harder

fedex it was

a small token of my apologies

Dj

I don't watch them anymore but the CSI shows were bad enough for product placement.
Google Earth, Dell, Apple, Hummer etc

darragh666

I always liked the snapple references in Seinfeld. Found this link which is a bunch of product references.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1HXXcVFySM

ixoy

Arrested Development did a very funny piece of product placement for "Burger King" where they had Tobias meet Carl Weathers. They read through the menu and exclaim how great Burger King is, with the narrator chipping in "It sure is!" Played perfectly.

pleasant Co.

ixoy wrote: »

Arrested Development....

"It's a wonderful restaurant!" :pac:

Busi_Girl08

Chuck is very heavy in Subway placements.

Loads of name drops for different products/brands (e.g. Wii, X Box, Black Ops, etc), and Converse would be the obvious one aswell.

Kiwi_knock

Arrested Development had a few references for Cloudmir vodka, which is I think is a product they made up.

The Hawaii Five-O episode last Sunday was a big advertisements for CHiPs as well, made me think that they are going to revive that show as well.

Richard Dower

expectationlost wrote: »

the microsoft placement has got to be the worst, it in so many shows so much, like last nights castle

Last night on Gossip Girl Charlie was "Binging" stuff on her laptop :rolleyes:

Owen

FouxDaFaFa wrote: »

Bones is pretty bad alright, I remember one ep when the characters actually watched a trailer for avatar. And then dicussed avatar. And went to see it.

That was an in-joke. One of the guest Actors on that episode of Bones was the nerdy scientist from Avatar.

Richard Dower

PaintDoctor wrote: »

That was an in-joke. One of the guest Actors on that episode of Bones was the nerdy scientist from Avatar.

Yeah, and the movie just HAPPENED to be released that week :rolleyes:

sumsar

One thing i hated about heroes was how much it advertised the nissan versa!! they advertise that all the time, with them alway driving it or having close ups... but the worst was having hiro say it all the time! but what was smart with that was that he had subtitles like in the image



and then when they had it on the cover of the comics! i hated it..

longhalloween

30 Rock on Verizon phones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36wUmJGzvA

'Can we have our money now?'

Kevface91

oh yeah, you gotta love 30 rock for the product placement- SUPER-liminal advertising at its best!

see also : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aniS3HaLwEY&feature=related


seinfeld also had some stuff in it (in the ENTIRE episode that was devoted to him)

Seoda1

A subtle one is Coca Cola in American Idol on the judges desk with the red cups! What I want to know is what are they really drinking? Pepsi???

baalthor

dtfo wrote: »

In the first transformers movie when the transformer is coming out of the pool and the little girl is holding a huge my little pony teddy, reminds of the simpsons episode when bart and lisa were news reporters and their show was taken over by that crap cartoon - the mattel hour something

Since Transformers (and My Little Pony) started off as toys it's hard to object to product placement in the movies/TV series; they ARE product placement.


Rememember the scene in the Sopranos where the old mafia guy crashed into a lamp-post and knocked down a sign saying "Your Product Here" ?

fee fi fo fum

Diet Coke cans all over the table in the photos released of Obama et al viewing the Osama siege

random.stranger

Richard Dower wrote: »

Product placement is a given in movies and has become much more noticable in tv shows in the last number of years. While from a financial standpoint you understand why it's done.
....
....

Can you give any more?.....any good examples that seemlessly blend, YT vids are welcomed

The Irish version of the Apprentice gets my vote, it's hard to notice where the ad breaks end and the program begins. How's that for seamless blending?

Nerdkiller1991

Wayne's World had a great scene where when they were talking about who should sponsor their TV show and while they were saying that they wouldn't sell out, they were blatantly showcasing products from Pizza Hut, Pepsi, Reebok and the like.

bonerm

Twilight Zone. Shameless product placement in many of the episodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R60sMe4sb9k

I have the DVD's of this show and the ad's have been left in

cashback

Colmo52 wrote: »

Hawaii Five-O

Microsoft/Bing

If you dont know what bing is then Google it.

There's also some sneaky advertising in there by the Northern Ireland tourist board. Sickening!