Your best/worst examples of product placement on tv?

Richard Dower · 30-04-2011 03:31PM #1

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 · 30-04-2011 03:35PM

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 · 30-04-2011 03:48PM

Hawaii Five-O

Microsoft/Bing

If you dont know what bing is then Google it.

Richard Dower · 30-04-2011 03:50PM

^ that's brutal!

RolandIRL · 30-04-2011 04:22PM

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

FouxDaFaFa · 30-04-2011 04:28PM

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 · 30-04-2011 05:41PM

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 · 30-04-2011 05:42PM

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

dtfo · 30-04-2011 05:48PM

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 · 30-04-2011 07:19PM

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 · 30-04-2011 08:15PM

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. · 30-04-2011 09:46PM

chuck and subway. bit over the top

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

Biggins · 30-04-2011 10:38PM

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 · 02-05-2011 11:29AM

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 · 02-05-2011 11:47AM

Cellular, biggest Nokia ad

Clareman · 02-05-2011 03:09PM

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 · 02-05-2011 05:48PM

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 · 02-05-2011 06:15PM

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

S.M.B. · 02-05-2011 07:06PM

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

PhiloCypher · 02-05-2011 07:07PM

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

tvnutz · 02-05-2011 08:18PM

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 · 03-05-2011 10:11AM

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 · 03-05-2011 12:21PM

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 · 03-05-2011 01:30PM

all the dell and cisco stuff in 24 iirc

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

amacachi · 03-05-2011 01:39PM

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 · 03-05-2011 03:22PM

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

filthymcnasty · 03-05-2011 04:51PM

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

J-blk · 03-05-2011 05:09PM

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 · 03-05-2011 05:16PM

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 · 03-05-2011 06:03PM

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 · 03-05-2011 06:15PM

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

Your best/worst examples of product placement on tv?

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