"product placement" news and stories

These days, product placement (especially when it comes to food) is a fact of life. We all know that when one of our favorite television characters is holding a Coke or Pepsi product in an episode of their show, the company paid big bucks to get it there. Same goes for any mention of Kraft cheese, Cheerios cereal or Tropicana orange juice. We've come to expect this from scripted and reality TV shows (think about all the products on Big Brother or even Jon and Kate Plus Eight).

You'd like to think that the news is incorruptible, miles away from the allure of food companies offering pay for placement. Apparently, journalistic standards are a little looser in Las Vegas, where at Fox affiliate, KVVU, morning anchors now display plastic cups of McDonald's iced coffee on the podium, where a station-branded coffee mug used to sit. They hardly ever touch these cups, and the printed-on labels are angled for best viewing. The station readily admits that it's a sponsored promotion and defends the practice by saying that they cups don't come out until they start airing the lighter morning news at 7 a.m.

What do you think? Is it appropriate for food companies to get product placement on the news?

[via New York Times]

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Anyone spot a bottle of Turnbull Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon in HBO's Six Feet Under? Or how about a Clos du Val Cabernet in the movie "The Terminal," in which Tom Hanks orders a bottle for a romantic dinner?

Me neither, not that I actually watched much SFU. Haven't seen the Hanks film either come to that. Still, wine product placement is becoming a booming industry with several companies specialising in getting wine in front of the camera. Unlike big names, Coca-Cola for example, which are instantly recognisable on the screen wine labels are not. Wineries of course do not have the big budgets to actually pay for their wines to be displayed instead they tend to support show biz events and celebrity parties.

Wine film Sideways of course had plenty of wine plugs but these were products and places were not pitched but were actually what the film makers enjoyed.

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 Cinematical has just reported that Burger King is planning to make a feature length feature film that will, of course, advertise the fast food restaurant.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

According to an article in Advertising Age Magazine, the company is in the process of developing a script for a situation comedy that takes place in an apartment above a Burger King. Working with the ad firm Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the movie "will be a cross between Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, Raising Victor Vargas and What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, intentionally avoiding the kind of dumb comedy featured in another fast-food-advertisement of a movie, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. "

Huge mistake. Well, the movie at all is a huge mistake, but the reason that the White Castle flick was so surprisingly successful was because it was silly. It didn't take itself seriously. And, clearly, the Burger King people are dead serious about this.

Burger King isn't planning to have the King in the film, but with the crack team of ad wizards that work for BK, who knows what they'll end up churning out even without including him.

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