Product Placement

Watching a 1948 movie, Call Northside 777, with Jimmy
Stewart. Very cool old flick, if you want to see what life
was like in the 40's. It has everything, lots of outdoor
location shots.

Has the earliest evidence of product placement I've seen.
I saw Nectar Beer at least four times. Stewart is drinking
a bottle. I saw a neon sign for it in a street scene. And
at two of the bars Stewart visited, there were Nectar
beer signs on the wall.

Nectar was a local Chicago brew, made from 1933 to 1951.
The movie was made in 1948. Pretty cool, it had to be done
on purpose, four times is not a coincidence.

Here's a vintage can for Nectar. Rare, these sell in the $150
range.

Quote: Evenbob

Here's a vintage can for Nectar. Rare, these sell in the $150 range.

How would I go about becoming an Advantage Beer Can Counterfeiter?

Product Placement is almost as old as movies.

Visual product placement isn't so bad, I just hate when they talk about the product in an unnatural way.

In the very first episode of The Real World a staffer would sneak quietly into the house and arrange all the soda cans with the labels properly displayed so as to show one of the sponsors products and nothing but that sponsor's products anytime anyone opened the refrigerator.

When a movie was made about African mercenaries one bit of stunt driving was so long and so clearly favored a Toyota Land Cruiser that the audience was heard to groan at the overly long segment displaying its abilities.

Quote: Pacomartin

Product Placement is almost as old as movies.

I had just never seen it so obvious so many times
in a movie that old. Stewart gets a beer from
the fridge and sets it down so we can see and
read the label. His wife moves it and does the
same.

I saw recent movie where everybody was drinking
Bud thru the whole thing. They would open
a fridge and it was full of Bud Lite. They went
to a bar and Bud was the only beer sign.
Ridiculous.

We haven't even begun to see product placements when digitally placing them begins in new and old programs. Then consider 3D printing and which products you'll actually have to buy from manufacturers and the competition gets even more fierce. I'd like to think I could be immune to seeing products but I know I'm not and the power of suggestion is just to hard to resist. Especially when you aren't even aware of it.

The mind assuming reality is just too inherent in how our brains function. Take a yellow labeled bottle of 7up and people think it's more lemony without anything changing. It's a lot harder to fool the mind than to have the mind fool you.

I recall a movie about a dancer/welder in Pittsburg, Flashdance, I think. It started an entire fashion trend as young girls all started dressing in raggedy sweatshirts.

Even dialog in the movies is carefully selected. That movie with in insurable Val Kilmer and uninsurable druggie actor whose name I can't even recall now had the line "Slow your roll" ... and it was fairly early in the rebound of use of that phrase.

Some of the Reality shows will pixel out any logo they don't get paid to televise: shirts, cars, anything. Its pay or its pixillated.

Big Bang theory does that. They always hide / disguise the brand names from what they are drinking / eating. But they'll talk about a brand name.

Myka Bering kept talking about Twizzlers, which doesn't really annoy me because it is very sexy. But when the characters started doing complete car commercials as part of the dialogue, it was too much.

I actually think that product placement is a great way to get brand recognition into you. Let's face it, the younger generation DVR and never watches live TV. I've had a DVR for about 10 years now, and my habit is to tape EVERYTHING.

I'll even watch a Baseball game with a 40 minute delay, as I know that there are at least 16 90 second breaks and four-five 2 minute pitching changes. It doesn't stop Rogers to put artificial ads for Orange Julius next to the baselines and an ad for something else in the black area in the OF. By the time I've finished watching, I'm caught up -- no commercials. And I watch 1 hour shows at least 16 minutes in and 30 minute shows 8 minutes in.

So when Doritos gets their ad on Survivor and Travelocity gets onto the Amazing Race and Mountain Dew makes it onto Big Bag, I think that, from a advertising standpoint, that it's a good investment. See I remember the advertisers, and I'm likely to use their products, whereas I have no idea what was broadcast during the commercials.

It's also why the networks put up the annoying popups at the bottom of the screen during shows too... they know people don't watch commercials.