A Bone to Pick

                 In a new car on their way to a grisly murder scene, characters in the popular television series Bones begin to discuss the fabulous new features of her brand new Toyota Prius. The product placement in this show is always laughably obvious; however, this scene was so egregious it took me right out of the program and left me feeling like I was just watching an hour long commercial.  Product placement may be successful in small doses, when done discretely; but, when producers start making the entire show revolve around what they are advertising it moves into an entirely different realm. Therefore, it is my belief that product placement advertising should be done correctly or not at all.

                For example, if viewers see a character on television pick up a name brand soda and take a drink, they think very little about the fact that the character was just endorsing that soda; most likely, if done correctly, they just believe the character was thirsty. If the viewer happens to think to themselves that they might like to have one of those sodas, that is an example of productive product placement. When characters go completely out of character to start talking about the fabulous features, and fantastic gas mileage, of the Toyota Prius, viewers quickly realize something strange is happening. They may start to question the logic of what they just witnessed. For example, why is Bones driving her brand new Prius to a crime scene anyway, shouldn’t the FBI agent riding shotgun be the one driving an official vehicle of some sort? It doesn’t take long to realize that we might have skipped through the commercials, thanks to our handy DVR’s, but we aren’t going to miss all of them.

                In addition, what happens when an entire program becomes a commercial? It can easily be argued that the previously mentioned offender, Bones, did just that in their “Avatar”episode. The entire program was devoted to promoting the new movie, Avatar. Three of the main characters stood in line for tickets through the majority of the program; an entire episode of the show was hammered into a clumsy commercial. Characters saying "This is more than a movie", while standing in front of Avatar posters might work in some programs; however, in a program about extremely intelligent scientist solving murders, it was a little off base. I quickly realized I had spent the last hour watching a very long commercial for Avatar and felt somewhat cheated in the process. Time is precious and when viewers choose a program to spend their time watching it is reprehensible to turn it into an hour long advertisement.

If the audience uses DVR’s to skip commercials it stands to reason that they do not want to see them. So if a television program decides to become one long commercial how long will it take for them to lose their audience? Advertisers will have to contain their product placement to plausible story lines, or risk viewers turning away. If everyone at the lab had an Apple computer that would work into the show just fine. If everyone talked on an IPhone, viewers could probably look past that also. But, don’t treat the audience like they are stupid, because if you mess with the illusion of the characters you risk losing your audience all together. The longer I think about how bad Bones has been about product placements, the more I think there must be something better I could be doing with my time. I have to assume that at least some of the other viewers feel the same and that would make blatant product placement a very unsuccessful form of advertising.