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Sep. 23rd, 2007 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenI've been thinking a lot lately about advertising. Of late I've been fascinated by how it works, why it works, and how it's changing. Also, how we're changing towards it.
Specifically, are we moving towards a place where we're starting to do the ads for the advertisers? And is this necessarily a bad thing?
Thanks to the advent of wonderful objects such as Tivo, advertisers have been scrambling to find ways to get their message out there. One way which is increasing in popularity is product placement. Nancy on Weeds drinks Diet Coke. Jack Bauer saves the world in his Ford truck. America's Next Top Models only wear makeup brought to you by Cover Girl.
Some don't care for product placement, but I have to admit I'm totally in favor of it. I would much rather watch a TV show where a cool character uses a sleek and stylish cell phone rather than be subjected to a commercial that thinks telling me that I'm going to be assaulted in the subway is the way to get me to buy the same product. (As for all of my issues with that commercial - well, that's another post.)
Not only is product placement, to me, a great compromise between allowing me to avoid obnoxious commercial breaks while still bringing me TV shows that can only exist through the help of ad dollars, it's also realistic. People mention product names. Just two paragraphs ago I wrote "Tivo" instead of the more generic DVR. Likewise we don't avoid mentioning product names. Seeing a character go through contortions to cover up the label on a soda bottle can yank me out of a scene far more than seeing the label ever would have. Nobody in real life does that. We drink, we recycle, we move on.
Now one could argue about the pervasiveness of advertising in our own lives, such that we are comfortable seeing it reflected on our TVs. But, again, if we take the narrow construct of "Ads are necessary to allow our favorite TV shows to exist" I am totally down with this and agree that it makes tons of sense that Coach Taylor would take his family out to dinner at Applebee's.
(Mind you, that isn't to say that I feel that ads and shows must be intermixed. Personally I wouldn't mind moving towards a system where we pay for the shows directly and ads are removed from the picture. I'm just saying for the purposes of right now if the choice is product placement vs. being stalked by the Lunesta moth, I choose product placement.)
Of course part of the issue is how well the product is placed. Is the character interacting with the product in a realistic way, or did the story come to a grinding halt for the commercial break we were hoping to avoid? On Project Runway, models get done up in the L'Oreal Paris makeup room. Tim Gunn makes a quick mention of it and it's done. Conversely Top Chef grinds all narrative to a halt as it makes sure that we know that whenever possible the contestants are making use of the Glad Family Of Products, even if said products aren't wholly necessary to the challenge. Advantage: Project Runway.
Last year saw Veronica Mars commenting on how yes, she is from Neptune and drives a Saturn. Somewhat clunky, but in real life she probably would've mentioned it given her tendencies towards snark. Clunkier was Heroes with Hiro at a car rental counter insisting on a Nissan Versa because a comic book told him to. (Less clunky: Hiro pointing to the picture and the clerk behind the counter saying "Oh, you mean the Nissan Versa? Yeah, that is pretty popular.")
Regardless, sometimes the product is placed well enough that it becomes a part of the show and that show's characterization. This is where we fans come in.
During a marathon read of all the Heroes fanfic I could get my hands on, I noticed mentions of: you guessed it, the Nissan Versa. Even in situations that had nothing to do with Hiro and Ando's ride, if a need for a new car came up, a Versa was mentioned. Not all the time, granted, but still done.
Likewise in my own foray into writing fic, when I was faced with a moment of figuring out what Nathan might notice in the Wall Street Journal (a name drop all on its own) I went for him noticing that Nissan stocks were up.
I can't speak for the other fanficcers that used Nissan, but based on context I feel that the use was a meta-joke, much like my own. We know that the show enjoys a Nissan product placement, so we tongue-in-cheekly use it ourselves.
However, this in and of itself is an ad. We're product placing Nissan in our fics the same way they did on the show. Only we're not getting paid for it. ...oops?
Or is it?
My gut instinct is that if any advertiser found out that fans were willingly perpetuating their ads, they would wet themselves with glee. It would probably be right up there with the moment that somebody figured out that people would not only pay to wear shirts with company logos on them, but pay extra depending on what the logo was. Granted, some of these advertisers might not realize that the ads are inside of stories that may have headers of "Includes incest, underage sex, and for a brief while some bestiality" but even still.
So the part of me that would like less advertising in my life has a knee-jerk reaction that by god we should be keeping it out of our fanfic. But on the other hand, the part of me that would like my favorite shows to go on wonders if maybe we should keep on keeping on.
After all, when we want to save our shows what do we do? Say we'll buy the products that are advertised. On the whole we grok that hating something = tell the advertisers we'll never use them again, loving = tell them we'll spend tons and tons of money in their direction.
So isn't product placement in fic much the same thing? We may not all have the money to drop on a new Nissan car, but we can fling their name in there, same as the show does. If we want to say thanks for helping to keep a beloved show on the air, why the heck not?
To be honest, I'm not sure. It feels reasonable, yet also a slippery slope. Possibly it all boils down to how aware we are of what we're doing. Do we do it as a way to say thanks, or are we just getting sucked in to the idea that advertising not only could be but should be everywhere?
And would we change our ways if we knew the Versa's thoughts about yaoi? ;)
Specifically, are we moving towards a place where we're starting to do the ads for the advertisers? And is this necessarily a bad thing?
Thanks to the advent of wonderful objects such as Tivo, advertisers have been scrambling to find ways to get their message out there. One way which is increasing in popularity is product placement. Nancy on Weeds drinks Diet Coke. Jack Bauer saves the world in his Ford truck. America's Next Top Models only wear makeup brought to you by Cover Girl.
Some don't care for product placement, but I have to admit I'm totally in favor of it. I would much rather watch a TV show where a cool character uses a sleek and stylish cell phone rather than be subjected to a commercial that thinks telling me that I'm going to be assaulted in the subway is the way to get me to buy the same product. (As for all of my issues with that commercial - well, that's another post.)
Not only is product placement, to me, a great compromise between allowing me to avoid obnoxious commercial breaks while still bringing me TV shows that can only exist through the help of ad dollars, it's also realistic. People mention product names. Just two paragraphs ago I wrote "Tivo" instead of the more generic DVR. Likewise we don't avoid mentioning product names. Seeing a character go through contortions to cover up the label on a soda bottle can yank me out of a scene far more than seeing the label ever would have. Nobody in real life does that. We drink, we recycle, we move on.
Now one could argue about the pervasiveness of advertising in our own lives, such that we are comfortable seeing it reflected on our TVs. But, again, if we take the narrow construct of "Ads are necessary to allow our favorite TV shows to exist" I am totally down with this and agree that it makes tons of sense that Coach Taylor would take his family out to dinner at Applebee's.
(Mind you, that isn't to say that I feel that ads and shows must be intermixed. Personally I wouldn't mind moving towards a system where we pay for the shows directly and ads are removed from the picture. I'm just saying for the purposes of right now if the choice is product placement vs. being stalked by the Lunesta moth, I choose product placement.)
Of course part of the issue is how well the product is placed. Is the character interacting with the product in a realistic way, or did the story come to a grinding halt for the commercial break we were hoping to avoid? On Project Runway, models get done up in the L'Oreal Paris makeup room. Tim Gunn makes a quick mention of it and it's done. Conversely Top Chef grinds all narrative to a halt as it makes sure that we know that whenever possible the contestants are making use of the Glad Family Of Products, even if said products aren't wholly necessary to the challenge. Advantage: Project Runway.
Last year saw Veronica Mars commenting on how yes, she is from Neptune and drives a Saturn. Somewhat clunky, but in real life she probably would've mentioned it given her tendencies towards snark. Clunkier was Heroes with Hiro at a car rental counter insisting on a Nissan Versa because a comic book told him to. (Less clunky: Hiro pointing to the picture and the clerk behind the counter saying "Oh, you mean the Nissan Versa? Yeah, that is pretty popular.")
Regardless, sometimes the product is placed well enough that it becomes a part of the show and that show's characterization. This is where we fans come in.
During a marathon read of all the Heroes fanfic I could get my hands on, I noticed mentions of: you guessed it, the Nissan Versa. Even in situations that had nothing to do with Hiro and Ando's ride, if a need for a new car came up, a Versa was mentioned. Not all the time, granted, but still done.
Likewise in my own foray into writing fic, when I was faced with a moment of figuring out what Nathan might notice in the Wall Street Journal (a name drop all on its own) I went for him noticing that Nissan stocks were up.
I can't speak for the other fanficcers that used Nissan, but based on context I feel that the use was a meta-joke, much like my own. We know that the show enjoys a Nissan product placement, so we tongue-in-cheekly use it ourselves.
However, this in and of itself is an ad. We're product placing Nissan in our fics the same way they did on the show. Only we're not getting paid for it. ...oops?
Or is it?
My gut instinct is that if any advertiser found out that fans were willingly perpetuating their ads, they would wet themselves with glee. It would probably be right up there with the moment that somebody figured out that people would not only pay to wear shirts with company logos on them, but pay extra depending on what the logo was. Granted, some of these advertisers might not realize that the ads are inside of stories that may have headers of "Includes incest, underage sex, and for a brief while some bestiality" but even still.
So the part of me that would like less advertising in my life has a knee-jerk reaction that by god we should be keeping it out of our fanfic. But on the other hand, the part of me that would like my favorite shows to go on wonders if maybe we should keep on keeping on.
After all, when we want to save our shows what do we do? Say we'll buy the products that are advertised. On the whole we grok that hating something = tell the advertisers we'll never use them again, loving = tell them we'll spend tons and tons of money in their direction.
So isn't product placement in fic much the same thing? We may not all have the money to drop on a new Nissan car, but we can fling their name in there, same as the show does. If we want to say thanks for helping to keep a beloved show on the air, why the heck not?
To be honest, I'm not sure. It feels reasonable, yet also a slippery slope. Possibly it all boils down to how aware we are of what we're doing. Do we do it as a way to say thanks, or are we just getting sucked in to the idea that advertising not only could be but should be everywhere?
And would we change our ways if we knew the Versa's thoughts about yaoi? ;)
