Product Porn
It may as well be naked chicks running around all naked.
Seriously, this bothers me so much.
Product placement or product porn in television and movies has been something since the first dirtbag advertiser thought of it.
Like a good special effect, product porn should be something that you don’t notice. Subtle background items that give you top of mind awareness.
Then you get to shows like The Biggest Loser.
I get the show. It’s supposed to be helping people get healthy and lose weight. I don’t have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the commercial within the episode. The trainer walks in the room and one of the contestants says something about being hungry. The trainer responds by whipping out a pack of X Brand gum and then they spout for a few minutes about how great it is and blah blah blah. Then the contestants eagerly accept whatever bs their trainer just fed them and reiterate it back to us again.
I already have to sit through 2-3 minutes of commercials as it is. Do I really need this mid-segment garbage?
If you want to push products within a show, fine. Just do it in a way that doesn’t make me turn the channel in the middle of the show to see if WGN has got America’s Funniest Home Videos on.
February 11th, 2009 at 7:38 am
There is no way around it anymore. Last year I really noticed that the NBC lineup on Thursdays is so hardcore product pushing. Especially 30 Rock. Don’t get me wrong, I love that show. But that show is basically a TV series made to help push GE products.
February 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Jack Donaghy is in charge of all television and microwave programming for GE.
February 13th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
It’s everywhere now. Like getting Jack’s pizza with Kraft Cheese… cross promotional stuff like that. Or Top Chef where they use X brand tupperware… I don’t care what tupperware they use. I get it, it’s advertising and the show gets a bunch of money for it.
But when you’ve lost the very soul of your show, its getting ridiculous.
March 11th, 2009 at 8:35 am
It’s especially bad when they try to make it look like a random situation when in reality the contestants have lines and they are really bad at acting. “MMMM, these Fiber bars are really good.”