I just came back from a media event at Future Shop where Tod Maffin, Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte were discussing the future of HDTV. Although this was not explicitly meant to be an advertising event for one of Canada’s biggest big box electronics stores, the branding was very obvious and the debate participants had no problems with dropping company names and talking directly about the product selection at Future Shop. Later today (or possibly tomorrow morning), I plan on putting a blog post on Beyond the Rhetoric exploring this event in further detail.
On Monday, I watched the season premiere of Heroes on NBC. Each time it came to a commercial break, there was a reminder that this episode of Heroes was presented with limited advertising, courtesy of Nissan. The commercial breaks were less numerous and generally shorter than most other network programming. The reasoning was that there was a significant amount of Nissan product placement in the episode itself and they received premium ad time during the commercial breaks. In regards to the former, Claire received a Nissan Rogue from Mr. Bennet as a present. As you recall, Hiro was driving around in a Nissan Versa.
Watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report last night, both of them made mention of a entertainment news program that was presented with limited commercial breaks as well and that’s because it too had quite a bit of product placement, specifically for Halo 3 and Walmart.
I’m OK with product placement so long as it is subtle, but this latest string couldn’t be more blatant. If you want to sell me something, just sell it to me in an advertisement that explicitly says, “Buy me!” I feel that I am being a bit of a hypocrite, though, because we’ve seen the ‘net version of product placement in the form of paid posts and paid reviews. I have no problem with those so long as they come with proper disclosure.
What’s your take on product placement? Is it effective marketing and everyone wins, or is it little more than a sleazy ploy?
Collin
September 27, 2007 4:16 pm
Well advertising makes the world go round. And anytime you can put a thought into someones head and keep it there, your doing good. It is a effective means to get a point made. http://www.neverblueads.com/signup?ref=aff_29784 go to this link for Never Blue adds, I joined the other day and am amazed on how well they put there adds together to catch peoples eyes. Every bit helps
Darren Barefoot
September 28, 2007 3:00 am
Thanks for coming to the event, and writing it up. I think it’s definitely fair to call the Future Shop event (which, I should disclose to your readers, I was helping to promote and I invited you) a promotional event. So it’s a little different from product placement in that no one was pretending that it was anything but marketing for Future Shop.
That’s more or less the same as advertising, except that I suppose it’s less blatant and, in this case, had information that seemed reasonably valuable if you were in the market for a TV.
Coincidentally, we’re catching up on season one of Heroes at the moment. When you watch one episode a night for three weeks, you notice certain trends. One is the blatant, regular product placement for the Nissan Versa. It gets ridiculous.
The truth of offline product placement and advertising is that we’re not even sure how well they work. I think it’s one of the great lies of media in the twentieth century.
Michelle Sullivan
September 28, 2007 6:49 am
I’m not sure I would expect an event hosted by Future Shop, held in a Future Shop store and made webcast available through the Future Shop website to be anything but a Future Shop promotion. If the guests had mentioned the words Best Buy, my jaw would have dropped. Is it really a less blatant form of advertising, Darren? I’m not sure I’d agree. Not only do I think it really couldn’t have been more blatant, it seems pretty fair game to me. I think we’re becoming a pretty advertising-savvy society. I would be surprised if anyone went in expecting anything else.
Now we know what Future Shop offers us as far as LCD/Plasma screens go. Maybe Best Buy will jump in and give us their side of the story.
What I got out of the event? Other than a few laughs watching the technician mike Amber, to what I imagined to be the great delight of all the geeks watching the webcast? LCD for sunny living rooms and Plasmas for dark rooms. When a company runs an event like that it benefits the industry : now they just have to hope the viewer retains the real message : that Future Shop employees — like the ones participating in the chat room and the event — are knowledgeable about their products and so will help make the selection process easier.
I actually prefer ads to product placement. I can leave the room during a commercial break. Product placement just jars me out of my state of suspension of disbelief long enough to grumble about the obvious and awkward branding that can often run throughout a show.
Darren Barefoot
September 28, 2007 9:42 am
Michelle: I agree–there should probably be no ambivalence about the aim or promotional nature of the event. And you’re spot on about the event’s intended message.
Clearly I’m biased, but by ‘less blatant’, I meant that ads seek to compel you to buy, while an event like this provides information that hopefully will compel you to buy. The average person, I think, reaps nearly zero useful information out of an ad, but an event like this might prove applicable.
Rebecca, for example, blogged a bunch of info from the Vancouver event:
http://tinyurl.com/294vtm
It’s easy to imagine using that post as a resource to help me choose a television set in the future. Obviously the Future Shop people want you to buy it from them. Everyone’s mileage varies, of course.
(Incidentally, Best Buy owns Future Shop, so that wouldn’t have been that surprising. Now, say, ‘London Drugs’, yeah, that would’ve been a shocker).
Michelle Sullivan
September 28, 2007 10:06 am
re: Incidentally, Best Buy owns Future Shop
Of course. Right you are – we don’t have London Drugs in Montreal. Strike Best Buy and add The Source, maybe? You get my drift.
No criticism about the event from me, by the way. I’m a PR chick. For me, it’s all transparent and it’s all good.