The FCC has announced that they will be examining the practice of “embedded advertising” on television and will decide on what additional disclosure messages should be provided to protect the audience. This differs from simple product placement in that embedded advertising interweaves products into plot lines and dialogue, essentially, transforming a normal scene into an advertisement. The FCC contends that additional disclosure messages are necessary to protect viewers who may not be aware that advertisers are paying to have their products written into the plots of TV shows. Details, inside…
The article says,
Among examples cited by critics are episodes of the family-oriented show “7th Heaven,” which included plot lines revolving around Oreo cookies. Other examples include “The Office” in which characters work at a Staples office supply store; a “CSI” show in which characters promote features of a General Motors vehicle; and a “Smallville” episode in which the dialogue included the line “Acuvue to the rescue,” a reference to the contact lens maker.
7th Heaven provides a sparkling example of embedded advertising. Below, the characters are so busy choking down Oreos that they can barely spit out their dialogue.
In another scene, we hear the dialogue, “How about some cookies and milk? Oreos? It’s my favorite. Hey, mine too!” It seems that Nabisco is so vain that they even have to change the time-honored phrase “milk and cookies” to “cookies and milk.”
The AP says,
Writers, who have to incorporate products into scripts, and actors, who shill for products without getting paid for it, are especially unhappy.
The Writers Guild of America West, a union that represents Hollywood television and film screenwriters, wants “real time” disclosure at the time the product is mentioned, like a text “crawl” at the bottom of the screen.
“Since DVRs and other such devices allow viewers to skip or fast forward through opening and closing credits, requiring disclosure at some other moment in the programming will simply not offer adequate protection,” wrote Patric Verrone, president of the organization, in a letter to Martin.
Jeffrey Perlman with the American Advertising Federation said running a crawl is an “absolutely terrible idea” and that it would be “terribly disruptive” for television viewers.
We suppose some additional disclosure is a decent idea but we’re not exactly sure who the FCC is trying to protect. Does the FCC think that there are people out there (besides children) that believe that these TV characters are real people who are actually enjoying these products? Who exactly would benefit from additional disclosure? Naturally, Consumerists are much too savvy to become unwitting victims of embedded advertising. In fact, we’re so savvy that we don’t even feel like grabbing a gallon of cold milk and devouring a sleeve of creamy, crunchy, delicious Oreo cookies.
FCC may put stealthy advertising on audience radar [AP] (Thanks to Dan!)
More From Consumerist
-
Cable Industry Says It Shouldn't Have To Adjust Volume On Ads Because C-SPAN Doesn't Have To
-
Scratch & Sniff Internet Ad Technology Has A Long Way To Go
-
Which ISPs Are Providing The Speeds They Advertise?
-
Brits Ban Dior Ad Because No Amount Of Mascara Will Turn You Into Natalie Portman
-
Adblock Plus: Internet Heroes Or Banner Ad Shakedown Artists?
@RandomHookup: What movie have you seen that didn’t have advertisements? Because I want to go to your movie theater.
Simple solution: watch nothing but post-apocalyptic sci-fi. BSG has never rammed a single product down my throat…that I know of.
Unless you count a vague subliminal thrill at the sight of a curvaceous toaster.
It’s still better than the personalized ads that were in Minority Report. How would you like to be walking down in a mall and the poster nearest you addresses you by name? Or, better yet, what if people on the street were paid by the number of mentions of a product?
/this message brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
@apotheosis: Ruined billboards for Coke and burned-out Wal-Mart trucks. Easy.
I prefer it when the real product name is used, but it’s never natural. For instance, in the last season of Dead Zone, there were these fucking awful bits where John was paying for things with his VISA! It was so convenient! Just tap and go, with his VISA! His wallet was stolen, but returned. But it didn’t have any cash, just his VISA! Maybe it was because the horse race was sponsored by VISA!
I grew up in England watching kids BBC shows like Blue Peter. For the longest time I wondered what sticky-back plastic was, why didn’t they just use Sellotape?
In closing, keep it real, but please, act real too.
Smallville’s one of the worst whores for advertising.
They had one episode focused at the Stride Gum factory and one of the characters started chewing a pack of Stride gum tainted with Kryptonite.
@rmz:
…crap.
@ironchef: Smallville is by far my most favorite show. I go from Adult Male to school girl when it’s on. I was writing the same comment you were, but I erased it. I couldn’t speak badly about my baby.
But you’re right. They do whore that shit bad. That episode was ruined.
Count me in with the “rather have product placement than more, or ‘un-fast-forward-able’, commercial breaks” camp. Or those damn break-in bottom of screen commercials, particularly when they make noise; those are beyond irritating.
On top of that, I have to admire the biting tongue-in-cheek tone the host and judges of American Idol used for their Coke and Apple tie-ins.
Have a disclaimer if we must, I guess, but… must we? I mean, is there anyone who would say, hey, Hiro likes grape nehi’s, so I must like grape nehi’s? Wait, nevermind. I already know the answer. /sigh
@ironchef: LOL! Really? Wow, I suppose I should be up in arms about this, but all the shows I watch never do shameful stuff like this, but if they do (late night talk shows) then it’s blatantly obvious.
Although there could be an argument that an entire episode about a Stride Gum factory and gum tainted w/ kryptonite is obvious enough.
What sucks is that the Nissan Versa is actually a decent car. But if I broke down and bought one, I feel like I would be caving in to the brain washing I received in Heroes Season 1.
@nfs: Exactly, I hate that so much!!
This is the most ridiculous thing in the world.
Doesn’t the supposed need to “protect the consumer” directly imply that the consumer is so moronic that they would buy a product simply because it appears on a TV show?
I can’t wait until all TV becomes like MTV, where logos on t-shirts have to be blurred out because they’re so concerned that someone might be trying to advertise something.
Those are the most retarded examples evar. All of those things happen in real life… People babbling about how they both like the same kind of cookie? Someone saying a catchy phrase from a commercial when it (both the product and the phrase) work?
Now ironchef has a good example.
@apotheosis: Or pre-industrial fantasy or pre-ww2 war epics. Can’t pitch products that haven’t been invented. No coca cola in medieval Europe and no Zune’s in Middle Earth.
@smartmuffin: Most reality tv already does that. And most tv shows too. Look at laptops having their logo’s covered.
@donkeyjote: Ugh, why am I not surprised. I don’t watch much TV these days, but this is just sad. Of all the things the government needs to protect us from, this wouldn’t even make the top 100.
@karmaghost: You must have missed the episode where the Japanese Guy (Hiro) gets a Nissan Versa!
The Whole episode was him saying it over and over again, which was one of the low points in the series.
this is why i love netflix
@Youthier: yeah, but carl weathers was hilarious and the advertising worked. i still won’t touch bk with ten foot pole. “hey, do you guys have free refills?”
If I was an actor or screenwriter, I’d be insulted that I had to write in or act this crap. I’d also gladly pay more for ad-free cable, but unfortunately the cable companies failure to offer such is going to kill them in favor of the streamed/downloaded programming that they hate so much.
Here’s an open letter to all executives:
Yes, y’all did a great thing by developing and growing your business, but that doesn’t mean you get to sit on your ass and just reap the rewards now. Sorry, I know it’s not fair, but you’ve got to innovate or die, and someone should have told you that when you were starting out in your career. It’s possible to stall things just until you retire, which is apparently the record industry’s plan, but it’s a crappy thing to do. Yes, you’re entitled to do it, and perhaps it’s a little unfair to expect you to work hard and solve problems and then step aside just when you got things working, but it’s kinda the way things have to go. Either retire early, work on your golf game and travel the world and let the next generation solve the next set of problems, or realize that all your decades of work entitles you to nothing, and you have to start all over again in a new market. Those are your choices, and it just sucks that no one told you this when you started out. In the grand scheme of things, you’re actually in a better situation than most, because you actually get to choose to take on a whole new set of hard problems or relinquish responsibility for them with no guilt. Either choice is exciting and new, and both would be better for everyone than simply trying to preserve the status quo.
@coan_net: Yeah, I have to say, most of it doesn’t bother me. I find the stupid, made-up brand names more distracting.
Honestly, I do wonder how effective it is though. I would consider my mom a pretty good representation of the average American – average intelligence (maybe even higher), high school graduate… it took her 4 seasons of American Idol before she noticed that it’s sponsored by Coke.
The one that drove me nuts wasn’t even on TV…in Iron Man this multi billionaire comes back from being held prisoner for three months and tells his driver to get him a cheeseburger and the guy hands him BURGER KING???? Are you KIDDING ME?? If I was Stark I’d have kicked the guy’s ass for buying me Burger King…anyone who grew up in SoCal knows its In and Out or nothin’
To all the people that are annoyed at the Bill Engval crap on Family Guy, one thing I’ve noticed is that it pauses at the last half second before the commercial break, so it’s not actually interrupting the show in the middle, only shaving off .5 seconds of dialog at the end before going to commercial. Still annoying as hell, especially since it’s mixed at a higher volume then the rest of the show.
Instead of FCC going after this crap, make it illegal to play commercials at twice the volume of a tv show.
@donkeyjote: It’s funny, I randomly tuned into an episode of Biggest Loser a few months ago and a few of the contestants were awkwardly, and very badly, shilling for some tiny popcorn bags. It was so terrible that I hope they got compensated for losing their dignity like that.
The bad part is I’m pretty sure I remember logos being covered up earlier in the show.
What’s that FCC? You’re telling me to continue not getting cable TV? Yeah, all right, I /do/ need that money to buy beer and pornography…
@shockwaver: Yeah, but how often does the FCC do something that’s constructive?
actually, I’d rather see some corporate logo in the bottom corner, replacing the TV channel’s logo during the in-show ad. As in, I’d rather see that then have to ffwd through 2 minutes of absolute crap. US TV ads are so despicable that if they can write stuff into a show instead of forcing their vile attempts at sales pitches onto us I’d probably buy their shit out of pure gratitude for them finally being creative.
@youbastid: Hey, you can’t blame everything on the liberals….
Just most things…
*ducks*
@MayorBee: Dang … beat me to the Carl’s Junior punch.
I’d gladly watch product placement to eliminate commercial breaks. It might even help with immersion and realism. THey could even collect ad revenue each time the show aired in reruns.
I’m sure they want to avoid product placement in bad/canceled shows. Not to mention it removes the ability for the network to find different sponsors for a given show, should the ad price go up.
I think bottom crawl is the best compromise if they want ads running.
Of course, eventually we’ll end up with this.
Has anyone here seen “The Loop?” One of the best shows ever…though it got canceled.
They did a whole episode that made fun of product placement, while ironically revolving around Stride gum. They had boarding passes printed on Stride gum, the interior of the planes decked out in Stride colors (and the inflight movie was “Striderman 2″ – on a flight to Cincistride”
Oh man…Dwight worked at a Staples store for an episode…it was so scary. Where was the FCC to protect me from laughing?
Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance as soon as some knucklehead blames Bush’s FCC for not putting a stop to this practice, which obviously only benefits his Big Oil/Pharma/Agro/etc. pals.
@DanPVD: Yeah, The Office usually works its product placement into the context of the show so well that it really doesn’t detract from anything. Hooters, Sandals, iPods, Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, and all of those sorts of things are usually always mentioned/shown in passing, or would be something that the characters would conceivably be doing in real life anyway. If something crosses that line and makes its product-placement nature more conspicuous, then I’d maybe get annoyed about it. Hasn’t happened yet.
@Bladefist: Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance as soon as some knucklehead blames Bush’s FCC for not putting a stop to this practice, which obviously only benefits his Big Oil/Pharma/Agro/etc. pals.
@post_break:
For a second there I thought you were talking about something else.
—
That Oreo episode sounds like crap and very annoying, but then again, so is that show, and whoever watches it probably doesn’t mind because fuck.. they’re watching 7th Fucking Heaven. Showing an Apple computer because some character needs to hack the bad guys bank account? Not a big deal.
The whole having real-life products in shows/movies is just a way to make it more realistic, just as long as they’re not going out of their way to promote it. “Mmm, I really love to dunk my creamy on the inside chocolatey and crunchy on the outside Oreo into my Thermos of Mountain Dairy milk.” No one talks like that.
Then again, I kind of liked it when they had to do cheesy stuff like covering the e in Sprite.
@AtomicPlayboy: I’m curious how many liberals are secretly following me, waiting for me to screw up.
@Kaisum: Sorry, my attempt at humor missed its intended target. Guess I need to crank up the sarcasm meter.
@trujunglist: Little kids talk like that…
Am I the only one who realizes that it you can read the label on a product on t.v., they either had to get permission or were paid to do so. So when everybody on csi not only has an Iphone, but obnoxiously use it to show mugshots, I know that while it may be likely the stars have Iphones, it’s more likely a paid advertisement for Apple. Besides if you buy a product just because your favorite t.v. persona (because the characters are freaking ficticious) does then you really are a sucker.
Grow the hell up people. This is yet another way of the government justifying its own bloated existence by wasting my tax money on something over which it has zero Constitutional authority (not that a little thing like that has ever stopped any givernment agency, and most certainly not the all-knowing moral authority that is Kevin Martin’s FCC). Use your goddamned remote controls and turn off the TV if you don’t like ads, be they in the content or as commercials.
Guess what–producing things ain’t free, despite your idiotic whining. You don’t like paying for content, you don’t like the content’s owners to you know, actually OWN the work they created, you don’t want the costs to be defrayed by having sponsors pay for some of the content.
Do you work for free? Didn’t think so.
This is sadly typical of the mindset in this country and on The Consumerist. We get it. Companies are bad. Capitalism is bad. No one has the right to make any more profits than what some slacker in his mommy’s basement thinks is acceptable, all because he won’t get off his lazy ass and work.
Yeah! Sitck it to the man!!!!!
And in the meantime you have pathetic excuses for writers who can’t be bothered with fact checking here at the Consumerist–but why let that stop them. They invent facts that don’t exist, think an occassional typo on a Wal-Mart sign is worthy of a boldfaced snarky headline and generally pretent to be holier-than-thou because they’re sticking up for the little guy. Yet where is the glaring headline when they get something dead wrong? It doesn’t exitst. If they’re caught on making something up, they just change the story but don’t hold themselves accountable.
Stop expecting the government to be your damned nanny. Take responsibility for yourself and stop watching things you don’t like. You don’t have some God-given right to free entertainment. Go read a f-ing book if TV is all that bad.
The king of queens is king of product placement.
watch a episode and take a drink every time they talk / show a product and you will be way drunk by the time its over. seriously the show was almost one big ad
‘arbys coupons are as good as money here’
‘keri, i am heating my hot pocket’
‘who ate my toster strudle’
‘dont forget to buy me doritos at the supermarket keri’
‘pizza hut’
etc etc etc
So the FCC has to protect me from when a character uses a product in a fictional piece? How about when the actor tells me that a product is great and use their real name?
@therealhomerjaysimpson: It’s always amusing when people who complain about whining really like to get their whine on.
Longest post of the thread too! How proud you must be on your sanctipony.
@therealhomerjaysimpson: No apologies? [consumerist.com]
Please FOAD
@therealhomerjaysimpson:
One has to wonder why you’re even here….
——————–
therealhomerjaysimpson commented on FCC To Reevaluate “Embedded Advertising” On Television
“Grow the hell up people.”
——————–
therealhomerjaysimpson commented on Ben Popken On TV Talking ‘Bout Shrinking Packages
“Oh please. Ben, you would gripe either way.”
————
therealhomerjaysimpson commented on Walmart “Junior” Panties Suggest That Your Genitals Are Better Than Credit Cards
“This is yet another example of the meaningless “news” this site posts.”
————-
therealhomerjaysimpson commented on Too Sexy For Southwest Airlines Woman Poses Nude
“How is this even remotely considered consumer news?”
The mentality isn’t “my fav character used X, so I must use X also” but rather a “which brand should I use? I’ve heard of X, so it must be a good brand.” Unless all of your products are generic, chances are that you went along with this same mentality. Having disclaimers while the show is running will just re-enforce this type of thinking.
But, if they did this at the beginning of the show “this program was brought to you by…” and then the product placement was done, then watching the show would be more fun. Seriously, that was the first time in years that I saw “Seventh Heaven” and actually found it entertaining.
The first season of Kyle XY is the best.
“Whoa, these Sour Patch Kids are different.” “Yeah, they’re the new Extreme Sour Patch Kids.”
So how is this different from what they did in the 50′s? They used to buy up whole programs on the radio and TV, and used to have integrated commercials in the show. I’d rather go back to that than have breaks every five minutes.