Mar 11

If there's one thing I shamefully find amusing, its plugs. No, not hair plugs. No, not outlet plugs. Plugs - meaning product placement in movies or television. This is only because I find them to be funny, especially when they come across forced and unnatural...when an actor/reality TV star acts as a spokesperson in a commercial.

 

Take "The Biggest Loser" as an example. Between promoting ZipLoc, Subway, and Birds Eye frozen vegetables, this reality TV show is product placement happy. We skip through commercials to get back to the show as quickly as possible, but then we move right into a 60 second product placement scene, which, if removed, could easily eliminate some time from their unnecessary two hour slot. They make it so blatantly obvious that it actually becomes quite entertaining. Upon researching TV shows with the most product placement I found "The Biggest Loser" came in first with a whopping 6,248 a year! Runner up..."American Idol" with 4,636.

 

Companies pay a large fee to plug in their product into popular television series. So my question is, is this an effective advertising technique? For me, personally...probably not. But I'm not everybody. After some more research, I've come to the conclusion that product placement is more effective now than it was prior to TiVo/DVR days. We are now so reliant on these digital video recorders, which allow us to surpass all these 30-second advertisements. So now, the opportunity for a brand to get a their message across lies smack in the middle of our favorite television shows. This could only get worse...