DRIVE TO SURVIVE!

 

Who doesn’t know “The Walking Dead”? (Shame on you) It is a TV show which takes place in an post-apocalyptic atmosphere infested of  zombies. In order to survive, the last people have to move quickly and to cross over impracticable places. The best solution seems to be the usage of an four-by-four. For this occasion, it is the brand Hyundai which will help our heroes. We can see the car several times, and each time it seems indestructible and wandered to every ordeal. 

These product placements permit two things:

1) To accentuate the realism of the TV show by adding brands that we are familiar with. 2) To confer a specific picture to a character. 

Welcome to the Rich!

 

Dirty Sexy Money deals with this socio-professional category in which, members can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Actually, Dirty Sexy Money deals with the Darlings, the richest family of New York, a city which doesn’t lack of six numbers wages. Money seeps each episode, almost in an obscene way and puts the audience in a position of voyeurism. We have the feeling to be inside the narrator’s mind, and this way, we can see all the incidents that the family goes through. 

Therefore, the setting of the story suggests that many product placements have been made in this TV show, which bursts of money, luxury goods and vanity (ex:villas, haute couture clothes,etc.) 

 

Product placement, once a mainstay of movies (remember James Bond and his Aston Martin?), is starting to take over the small screen, as well. For example, The Donald orders his Celebrity Apprentice contestants to gin up a marketing campaign for Serta’s new Vera Wang mattress. The winning team from Survivor is rewarded with swigs of Mountain Dew.

As the cost of making TV shows escalates—at a time of declining ad sales—television networks are scouring Madison Avenue for partners that want to give their products a little screen time.

Some shows are product placement bonanzas. When folks at ABC sent out crews to build homes on the hit Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, they did it with Sears tools, installed Pella windows, and rolled into the neighborhood in a Ford pickup. Then again, few can top American Idol for over-the-top brand displays. As host Ryan Seacrest implores fans at home to download contestants’ songs to their Apple iPods, the judges sip from red Coke cups as the cameras cue in a music video promoting the latest Ford.

Sometimes it isn’t pretty, and no one seems to know if product placements entice folks to head to the stores. But even as ad sales slip, the number of product placements has increased, according to Nielsen, which tracks product placement and its effectiveness. Here are the top 15 broadcast network shows from 2008 with the most occurrences of product placement—and a few examples for each.

Desperately Rich !

 

In an incredibly blatant piece of product placement Lynette and Tom discuss how if he took a new job they could afford, not just a “new car” or a “sports car”, but “The new Lotus Evora”, Lynette says “I believe the Evora runs to about $76,000”. They get in and coo at it, there are scenes at the dealer.

This of course is the future of advertising in the Sky+ world. No-one watches ad breaks anymore. The closest we get to live is starting ten minutes after the programme begins to fast forward through the ads.

Brands addicted to “product placement”

 

Lots of experts suppose that the “product placement” process has known a big wave of success in 1982. The reason why? Because in 1982 was release the famous movie E.T, a film directed by Steven Spielberg. What’s the link? Thanks to the candy placement of the well-known brand Reese’s Piece, the brand will increase its sales of 65%. Since, the phenomenon is a common practice in the United States, who can’t stop using this process. Now there are many TV show that let appear several brands to promote their products.

A check-up for Apple?

 

Well implanted in the American cinematic culture, it is easy to find some examples of product placements in American TV shows. Today, I found an example from the famous TV show Dr House. Indeed, it is shown that the use of a product by one character has more impact than a simple appearance. Besides, it seems that this use presents a two-fold interest because it would bring certain legitimacy to the brand. In Dr House, we can talk about the brand Apple, which, despite its huge success, allowed itself to make a product placement in the TV show. It is clear that even the most famous brands in the world would accept to appear in a TV show, because it brings some reunification with their audience.

 

The Simpsons, a reference for luxury brands

           (Promotion for Gucci)

     

 

          (Promotion for Calvin Klein: the perfume used for Lisa’s dentures is “Obsession for Teeth” of Calvin Klein.)

Basically created to make people laugh, the Simpsons is an old TV show which has proved that its success is still current. That would explain why luxury brands asked to appear in several episodes in order to promote their goods and attract the audience of the Simpsons. Sometimes, mocked or sometime used as a simple detail, these brands are really famous worldwide.

 

The elegance of the Lawyers in “Suits”

 

For all the people who are attracted to suits or professional success, Harvey Specter becomes kind of a reference. Like James Bond, the role was created to make you dream: he is always in a position of strength, always at ease with women, respected by others, and especially well dressed. In relation to his clothes, and despite that Harvey talks about his tailor, it is Tom Ford who is in charge, with perfectly tailored suits, combined with elegant ties.

“Sex and the City” drives brands crazy

Groups of luxurious brands and mass brands jostled to go into partnership with the promotion of the movie, which was released the 28^th of May 2008.

In 2008, Sex and the City is the reference in term of fashion for the young women greedy of style. The reason why? Its heroines, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda don’t lack of glamor. If there is a record of 163 brands (Dior, Fendi, Manolo Blahnick, Jimmy Choo, Chanel…) appeared in the movie, not for commercial reasons, but for the needs of the movie, Sarah Jessica Parker limited at the minimum the ones which have rights to go into partnership with the movie. In France, only eight partners, including Sephora, Mercedes, American Airlines, Habitat, Packard Bell and Swarovski were retained.

Dresscode in Gossip Girl

 

Recently, I read an article about how series could present certain clothes as “wearable” by everyone, where cinema usually just makes them appear desirable, as if only the people in the movies or the celebrities can wear them. TV shows being longer than movies follow the everyday lives of its characters, and people can identify more to those characters’ routines. However, even though people can relate more to characters in TV shows because they have more time to get to know them than in movies, the fact that the outfits you see in different episodes are accessible to everyone is an illusion. In fact, in TV shows just like in movies, outfits and clothes in general are symbolic and don’t really translate their accessibility in real life. They are meant to show a character’s personality traits.

 

Gossip Girl, a TV show, which follows “the scandalous life of Manhattan’s elite”, offers an exact translation of our previous analysis. Serena Van Der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf, two of the main characters, belong to a world of luxury and excess: their wardrobes are filled with designer clothes that are obviously not accessible to everyone yet, it has been noticed that their styles inspire most, if not all of the shows’ viewers in their own personal styles. The example of Gossip Girl is similar to the principle on which high end brands, even though rather inaccessible, still arouse the desire of people to own what they can’t really have. Gossip Girl solves the issue of viewers actually feeling discouraged and aware of the fact that they may never get to have what the characters have in a smart and wicked way, by presenting an image of a soap opera” that is considered by most as “cheap”.