3. Product placement drives media content

As a public relations major product placement has become an unstoppable force. Product placement in the media has become the newest and one of the most profitable ways for advertisers to get their product recognized by their target audience. Product placement has become on of the most profitable sects of the public relations and advertising industries. The first huge product placement deal was in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich. Julia Roberts’s character only drank a local company’s coffee, and all the mugs or coffee cups in the film had the companies label on it. For this placement the coffee company shelled out over a million dollars.
In Media and Society they talk about the dangers of letting advertising have such a dominate role when it comes to programming(exhibit 2.8 pg 66). Using the example of music videos on MTV Media and Society discusses how advertising and programming has become so intertwined that it has become impossible to separate the two. The book goes on to discuss how this close relationship has gotten to the point where advertisers have the ability to control some aspects of the media content. With so much money to be made from allowing advertisers to have more pull in the programming it looks like product placement is here to stay.
The world in which Titus and his family live is controlled not only by the media but by the advertising firms that sell their products over their feeds. Like the feed, advertisers today are using special niche channels to zero in on very specialized audiences. This concept is best demonstrated in Feed when Quendy arrives at the party covered with false lesions because of the direct advertising sent to her feed. (Pg 191) The feed records every purchase made by the individual and then sends direct advertising related to their purchase history. With the way that product placement is going this type of advertising is in our future. Soon advertisers will know what we want before we do.

The first video is a great compilation of blatant product placement from a number of networks. The product placement is shameless. I feel like product placement today is not only obvious, but it has become a part of the media experience. The second clip is purely for my own amusement. A journalist asks American cult film legend David Lynch how he feels about the current relationship between movie studios and large corporations, and the resulting product placement. I can only imagine how many other directors, producers, and actors feel the same way about product placement in their films. (PS David Lynch’s Iphone commentary is equally funny and can also be found on youtube)