Figmentations

It looks like there is no escaping advertising and marketing in all it’s many forms. The evidence speaks for itself:

• TV shows leading into Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) with obvious ad tie-ins:
  

  But it begs the question: What if the game turns out to be little more than a commercial?

• TV shows leading to the development of action figures!?! Not surprised that Disney is involved in this one. They are, after all, the kings of merchandising.
• Then there’s advertainment…..
  

  where brands and programs become one….goes beyond typical product placement and writes brands in as actual characters. So rather than not so subtly hitting the viewer with occasional product drops, the same brand(s) will consistently enter the storyline.

• There’s the obvious “egregarious” product placement, as pointed out by the Writer’s Guild as per MediaPost Publication’s TV Watch:
  

  If a network or studio hints that a certain car manufacturer, cell phone company, or cracker company, might be of help to a borderline show (read that as big media budgets for the network advertising department), then inorganic product integrations will see the light of day.

  Seventy-five percent of product placement deals on TV right now are done with no money exchanging hands, ….. Writers want to get into the dialogue about product placement before all this changes dramatically.

• Beyond just who gets a cut of the money from practices like product placement, this practice shouldn’t be altering the content of a show.
  

  Producers are…worried about being forced to use products in their stories in ways that make them look silly.

• And they say that even the younger Myspace generation which is “very skeptical of media” can be reached…..

Realizing that “they’ve grown up being told who they are and what they [should] listen to, being marketed to,” helped the company figure out “how to talk to the MySpace generation,” Digiaro says.

“This generation is all about self-expression and consuming content in its own way.”

• It’s everywhere. I even saw it the other day on a recent Dr. Phil episode, where a gift for one of the guests was a Sliverado car, and how Dr. Phil went on and on about the details of the car. Part of the episode, as well as more advertising, is on his website (follow the above link to the section entitled, “A Gift for Good Work”). And, I do remember him even saying something to the effect that “this is like a commercial”. It was definitely rather overdone.

Money. Money. Money.