Gee, Jay Leno Sure Does Like Talking About Products
Edrants.com recently edited together all the moments of Leno & guests dropping product names. Yes, this is just one episode's worth of product references.
In the episode, Jay mentions Cialis, Snuggies, Starbucks, Pillsbury, Walmart, and Red Lobster, all before having a conversation with the Wendy's mascot. It seems like Jay likes to talk about products and brands almost as much as we do. Almost.
If you enjoyed this video, there are also far less interesting and much more paranoid examples from David Letterman and Conan.
Too many products in 'Jay Leno Show'? (video) [The Live Feed] (Thanks, Klay!)
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Of course, pretty much all mainstream media have been overrun with corporate shilling for at least the past twenty years, but from what I've seen lately, NBC's become the absolute worst.
SNL has been pretty much total crap since John Belushi died and the original cast split up, but their live commercial for Pepsi -- thinly disguised as an SNL sketch -- was the final nail in the coffin for me. Hell, SNL itself is just a "brand" now.
And while we're on the subject, does anybody remember a certain Phil Collins album from around 1985 -- the one made up almost entirely with songs based around a "night" theme, right about the time Michelob Beer had their big ad campaign with the theme of "light up the night", or something like that? Pretty much every damn' song on that album wound up in Michelob commercials that year (of course, I think everything Phil Collins produced after leaving Genesis was total crap, anyway).
On a show that relies on daily news, when you mention news stories, where they occur usually is part of the joke. And on the Wendy mascot turning 40, where you are going into a skit, you kind of have to mention Wendys. And who do you think mascots hang out with, other mascots, like all those new commercials where the Vlassic Stork is talking to the Jolly Green Giant and Charlie Tuna.
I honestly don't see these as "shilling" a product anymore than you can say Consumerist does the same thing when mentioning a company/place an incident took place in.
@gStein: Guests will sometimes get paid to mention them. I think there was something on either here or some other site about that.
Thank Tivo.
Not sure if anyone noticed, but I don't think Jay is typing.
Perhaps... that is the... REAL story here.
It wasn't just mentioning the name, it was deliberately pairing the name with iconography - wendys + square burgers + girl + combo; hairy girl + nair. Typically just dropping the name is enough to evoke a brand response, but this seemed forced.
That's 2+ minutes out of a 60-90 minute show? Even less when you take out all the commercial breaks.
I read somewhere that Leno was going to do on air commercials and placements. It is a trend to fight DVR's. I guess it is good because it pay for our shows.
@gStein: I don't think Colbert is paid for mentioning it, but the show is paid for it. But I like how he and Jon Stewart always make it over the top funny.
This is stupid. Incidental references to a product in your monologue isn't advertising.
I think The Biggest Loser is the worst offender of product placement. Actually it's more than product placement. There are segments in the show that are blatant commercials.
I think Bill Hicks best covered Leno's shilling some years back...
@LatherRinseRepeat: Top Chef can't go five minutes without panning to a shot of the GE logo or showing a box of Glad containers.
@GitEmSteveDave_@Gmail.comNeedsAWaveInvite: I disagree. That Microsoft Bing part definitely was advertising. Before he went into the skit he was telling the audience all the "great things" the search engine provided. Everything else was pretty eyebrow raising. Why would you ask your guests consumer-related questions? I mean, I understand "your favorite movie," but, "name five tire manufacturers"? Really?
@frank64: He's doing a placement right now with Ford with an electric Ford Focus, where has has the celebrity guest race the card around a track at the end of the show and they're keeping a leaderboard (Drew Barrymore was in the lead last I saw).
It's cute, it's reasonably germane to the show (celebrities! they do ridiculous stuff to entertain us!), and it's a nice placement for Ford (it's green!) and for Jay (he loves cars!). I don't mind it because it's a very obvious product placement that suits the show and they're very upfront about it. The ones that bug me are the ones where they're slipped in.
While there is probably some product placement in there, I think it's also about punchlines. It's prevailing comedy theory that specificity is funnier. If the punchline is about a candybay, you shouldn't say "candy bar" you should say "Snickers" or "Butterfinger". It's just funnier that way.
Ummm...not that Leno is funny mind you. I just think that's what going on in a lot of these instances.
oooh oooh oooh Laurie. I... I am getting an inappropriate reaction. I'll have to watch that episode now.
@gStein: I didn't watch the whole clip, but most of the beginning of it was him MOCKING those companies/products in the monologue. (And the Wal-Mart one he was setting up to make a joke about a real incident that happened at a Wal-Mart.)
The baby's last feeding of the day is during prime-time Leno, so we watch a lot of it. :) I can't do crime shows while breastfeeding, I get all freaked out.
@AgamemnonV1: And why would you say stuff like "everybody knows your signature hamburger is square"... the way he said it.
Bleh. Oh course he is, and so is every show on tv. you seriously can do this with every show. My advise is turn off your tv and welcome yourself back into the real world.
@j-o-h-n: Bill was a great comedian. He covered marketing dead on. you can google that: bill hicks + marketing. Probably NTFS.
Of course there's product placement on network television... that's how the shows make money. This been how television has been run since the beginning. Not quite sure I see what the big deal is.
Going back to the beginning of TV, shows would be sponsored by an advertiser. As audiences grew more sophisticated they took the advertising out of the show and used commercials more. TiVo is destroying this model, so they're putting more in show advertising back in.
@frank64: That's what I thought of when I saw this story as well. I read that marketers are trying to fight DVR fast forwarding and insert commercials/product placement right into the show, so you can't skip ahead.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!):
So you're the one person I (kinda) know who watches it. I was just saying I don't know anyone who watches Letterman.
Wow, only slightly more subtle than Mike Meyers...
@LatherRinseRepeat: Yeah but the show is pretty good. Honestly I don't like reality TV much but watching fat people cry because they have to do 5 minutes on a treadmill is awesome. Plus the changes are actually pretty dramatic so it's helping some people out in life. That's more than can be said of most TV.
@AgamemnonV1: Perhaps, but if they are making a "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for photos, it's a natural choice to poke fun. I mean, lemon pledge and shampoo is Mike Hard lemonade? Is Mike's making him shill his drink as a mixture of two cleaning products?
As for the tires, why would you shill for competing companies? I don't know if they were asking him in a "Not My Job" way, like NPR's Wait...Wait...Don't Tell Me does when they ask Michael Moore questions about manners or asked singer Mavis Staple about the company, Staples.
That's just my opinion though.
How 'bout a Fresca, huh?
Meh, watched Leno for the first time earlier this week to see what all the fuss was about. Not much was my conclusion. Not very funny. Not that entertaining.
Furthermore, he stole the celebrities racing round a track idea from the BBC and Top Gear!
@idip: reading that last sentence gave me a mental image of sunglasses and YYYYEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH
(no, not Howard Dean)
@frank64: Not to mention that commercials are often shared with the local broadcaster.. Each displays a couple during preset timeslots. So, product placement is ad money that they don't have to share with the local broadcasters.
That is a bit overboard. I hate such blatant product placement in shows. For example last night's episode of Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Blatant Coors and Dave & Busters product placement. Ruined the whole show for me because it happened throughout the entire episode. If they keep on doing this crap I'll stop watching this once great show.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): ...Drew Barrymore, who doesn't drive all that much (in fact her license was expired on the day of taping), and drove the course in a pencil skirt and HIGH platform heels, is in the lead.
Not bad for a girl who once blew the air conditioner off the top of an RV!
@outlulz: It's no Project Runway. If they could tie the models into some sort of placement deal, they would in a heartbeat.
Anybody watch Jimmy Kimmel lately?
We are returning to the advertising days of yesterday when TV talent all pitched products as part of the show.
@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Since I one of the many who are not watching (mind you, I didn't watch when he was on at 11:35 and I don't watch the other night time talkers), I am confused by your use of the word "card." Is the race taking place with replicas of the car or are they actually driving real cars outside?
@tbax929 is back from the beach: I've always liked Leno, but late in the evening I'm more in the mood for his friendly bluff-guy schtick than for something more cutting. And now that late in the evening for me is 9 p.m. (central) ...
We don't have cable, and the only things on network at 9 p.m. (central) are violent crime shows and the local news on Fox. I like crime shows, and I'll watch them during the daytime, but for some reason it really bugs me to feed the baby while watching a crime show and then put him to bed. I think it makes me paranoid. So I actually appreciate NBC having something lighthearted on at 9 p.m. because that last hour of primetime has become a dark, angry place over the last several years!
I also teach some night classes (hubby works days, I teach evenings), and it's a nice, lighter thing to watch when I get home, which is usually right about 9 p.m. Feed the baby, then go to bed. After lecturing for 3 hours, my brain is not geared up to follow deep plots ... just jokes about philandering politicians. :D
@RobertBaron: And back then you got a virtually a full 30 or 60 minutes of actual content, even if there were the occasional plugs for Carnation Instant Milk (or whatever it was that I saw on a Burns & Allen episode). Nowadays, we get 20 or 40 minutes out of 30 or 31 or 60 or 61 minutes and we still get somebody shilling for somebody. Either give me the GE CSI:NY show and 50 minutes of content or 40 minutes of CSI:NY with no cell phone shilling (and speaking of tie-ins, get rid of all the noise posing as music that the play over the no-dialogue scenes).
Ok, so I have just watched the clip and if that's a normal night for him, well, to quote/plug an oldie but a goodie: Where's the Beef? Take out his incessant commercial breaks and how much time is left for chit-chat and monologues and whatever else passes for content?
How many actually seemed like advertisements? I'm sure it's much fewer than the ones listed.
Telling a joke about a company - like, say, Red Lobster, does not count as an endorsement.
NBC dos have some kind of partnership with Bing, though. They have cheesy contests on Jimmy Fallon's show all the time.
10 years ago I was working in management for a nonprofit organization and was surprised to discover that a significant percentage of stories carried on national news -- and an even larger percentage on local news -- are "placed" stories.
I discovered this when a company who did such "placed" news stories (called VNRs or Video News Releases) pitched us. They produce ready-to-roll "news" stories pitching your product or service, they hvae prewritten scripts for local news talent to read the voiceover, and even answer-only interviews, with a question list, where the local news talent asks the questions and they cut it in. The local stations use it because it's free content, saves production expenses, and people don't have to go finding filler stories.
Now that I know what they are, it always appalls me how much of the local news is paid-for VNR content. So it doesn't surprise me at all to hear that the same sort of shit is happening on talk shows and so forth. Sad but inevitable, I guess.
@nybiker: Typo. Car. They built a little mini racetrack on the lot and they race the car around the track.
Unfortunately, all television (with the exception of some public access and paid cable) exists simply as a vehicle for advertising.
Even with no in-show product placement, content is there just to get more eyeballs for the advertisers. Making shows that people actually like is only a means to an end. Yes, Jay Leno is annoying (and hasn't been funny for ... 15 years? ever?), but this really isn't anything new. It's what television does.
Leno really should just go home and play with his many toys. There are quite enough inane, useless "entertaining" TV shows on the air, anyway.
@gStein: He DEFINITELY is getting some Payola from Ford... they have the "Ford electric car challenge" every night where some celeb drives the stupid car in circles and unfunniness and predictability ensues.
Conan apparently gave away a Lexus Hybrid or something too...
@cuchanu: If you don't know about it already, start playing any recorded show.. then press:
Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select
your -> button will now skip 30 seconds with each press, and the pigtail button will jump back 8, in case you overshot the show!
I much prefer "Stealth" advertising that keeps the show i'm watching immersive to "blatant" standard advertising.
In fact, back in school when I was working on my Broadcasting Degree, It was one of the things we often spoke about in Ads and Marketing, and I always pointed out that Stealth marketing and product placement with script integration was the real future of marketing.
It's not just Leno. NBC's prime-time lineup is so stuffed with product placements that even the better shows are no longer enjoyable.
i don't watch Leno, but how much of it is paid ads or free product mentions vs. incidental mentions?
iknow that The Daily Show usually mentions products that they obtained for free (baconnaise), but a lot of it is incidental to the comedy, or ridiculous products (Jimmy Dean sausage pancakes). Colbert, on the other hand, is mentioning sponsors on-air, (Doritos?) but i'm not sure if he's paid directly for the mentions or not.
what i've seen from the first episode of Leno and Fallon, they sem to be getting paid directly for product placement.