Advertising and Product Placement

Since the idea of product placement was mentioned in the video games lecture, I think I've suddenly become more aware of things around me. I went to watch the Island last weekend and couldn't help pick up quite a few: Xbox, Aquafina, MSN search, and Puma clothes. But most of these were real blatant placements as there are big signs of Xbox flashing as they play a game, and the MSN search is just so obvious.

I found a few sites which have picked up other examples of product placement. One of them is www.productplacement.com which explains it as "Product placement stands alone as the only form of advertising with a diminishing cost per thousand (CPM). Once the product is in the film, it is there forever, delivering impressions and media values in perpetuity." Then you can search the site for different examples of product placement in different movies which I found pretty cool.

On other websites I noticed a few placements that I missed such as Ben & Jerry's ice cream, the apple logo, the Cardillac CIEN (of course that's because I don't know too much about cars), Calvin Klein, and a Mactruck( http://www.bertelsen.ca/100/review-the-island-movie ). On the same site you find some comments at the bottom, even some really crude ones about the guy who wrote the review being an 'anti-capitalist' for saying that the product placement was too blatant.

I just find it amusing to realise that we don't notice all these products, and yet it affects us. Many people believe that this blatant use affects us negatively, and then you have those who don't even see it. Sometimes I wonder if these messages are subliminal. Of course I don't agree with that in the Island as it was quite obvious. How much is advertising taking over our worlds? Or how much has it taken over our world already? We live in a world of brands and logos in everything we do: the clothes we wear, the stationary we use, domestic things we use such as toothpaste, our cars... There are moments when I agree with other theories which say that the media is just a method that is used to aid the elite and take from the others. Most of what we see today is advertising. I remember learning that even on the news, most of the serious stuff only gets 15 minutes of the 1 hour, and that about 15 minutes is taken by advertising, and a lot by sports and entertainment. I just hope we don't become slaves to advertising, but then perhaps some of us already are...