So we assume you saw Undercover Boss last night, CBS' big new reality show that got the plum post-Super Bowl spot? Amazing, was it not? Televised entertainment has now completed its long, winding journey into becoming 100% corporate propaganda.
Well, now that NBC has traveled a few months back in time and given Leno the "Tonight Show" back, they've wasted no time in filling his crucial 10 pm spot: Look forward to Jerry Seinfeld, "Law & Order," and "Parenthood."
According to Variety, "The Jay Leno Show" ranks first among all TV shows when it comes to product placement. In just three months, "Leno" racked up 1,015 product mentions. All this selling-out must have gotten to Leno's head tonight.
With DVR's zipping through commercials, advertisers are struggling to get viewers to see what amazing products viewers should be using. If we're not watching commercials, how can we possibly know that Stride® gum lasts so indelibly long?
It's hard to believe that there is actually an inventor of product placement; like swine flu, it always seemed just nature's dark side. But someone thinks he did in fact invent it and is willing to sue to prove it.
The Home Shopping Network is a 24/7 ad for various useless crap. But is one single nonstop layer of ads enough, for consumers to learn about various pieces of crap? Or maybe could they put some ads in those ads?
Marketing whizzes for a movie called I Love You, Beth Cooper figured that a good idea to generate "buzz" would be to pay some valedictorian for a product placement in her high school graduation speech. They were wrong.
Meet Kenya Mejia, this year's valedictorian at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles. If her remarks at last month's graduation ceremony strike you as a bit forced, there's a good reason for that. Mejia may be the first high school student in history to insert a product placement into a graduation speech, a…
Planned Parenthood is mailing condoms to college kids in their welcome packets, which would be totally passé in developed regions of the country. But this was in Missouri!
Microsoft's new search-dealie "Bing" is going up against The Google, which is hard! Fortunately, Bing's marketing wizards have devised the world's most annoying ways to promote it. (*Bing* sound)!
Haha, we know exactly what to make of this: Axe Body Spray is sponsoring a nightclub in the Hamptons for the whole summer. Brah:
Last month NBC's Chuck had that Subway sandwich product placement that was so laughably flagrant we thought, "This will surely hurt the credibility of NBC's 'Chuck!'" How young and naive we were. Turns out that that Subway deal is literally the only reason that Chuck still exists:
NBC went and sold the most blatant product placement in TV history in its show Chuck, and what do you know, it worked! Not for Chuck; that shit is getting canceled. But for Subway, yes!
NBC has shockingly ruined the integrity of its dramatic show Chuck by allowing Subway what is perhaps the most blatant (and therefore laughable!) product placement in network TV history. Mmm, smell that chicken teriyaki.
The man you see hiding behind the blue binder is Josef Fritzl, the sick Austrian who plead guilty to enslaving his daughter for 24 years in his own rape dungeon. But what about the binder company???
Look, the nimble television networks are seamlessly transitioning into recession-era programming! Instead of sitcoms about upwardly mobile whites, it's sitcoms about downwardly mobile whites. With product placement for the poors!
Rappers have been dropping brand names in their lyrics for cash for years; it's tasteless, but widespread. But why would you turn a memorial track for your dead friend into a Coogi ad?
Last week we totally harshed on NBC's 30 Rock for writing McDonald's McFlurry into its script in such a sellout-y way. But it was all natural, no ad money, just for fun, allegedly!
For all the e-ink spilled over whether 30 Rock gave the McFlurry too much product placement last week (even Jane Krakowski is unsure now!), we think there's a different, far bigger case to be made.
Last night's McFlurry-obsessed episode of 30 Rock? Totally not a McDonald's product placement, avers Tina Fey, the show's writer and star, and we must believe her, as she is everything right and good about America.
