Blatant Product Placement In Fox's 24
Aside from this current season (Season 6), I’m a huge fan of the Fox show 24. Over the years it’s become almost a game to watch along and notice all the gadgets Jack Bauer uses as he saves the day. Most of the time, it’s easy to “figure out” what brand name product he’s using, however they don’t usually plaster the logo across your television screen. For example, have you ever noticed that everyone in CTU uses Macs, but you never see an apple logo (as it’s usually covered with a grey circle or piece of duct tape). In the latest episode, however, we were plastered with an all to present and well known logo.
As the American president and his advisers sat down to have a video conference with the president of Russia, they used some sort of CISCO technology to connect the conference. The camera fades in from black and all we see is three large flat screen monitors all plastered with the CISCO logo, then the logo fades and the russian president is there.
Now I’ve never used CISCO technology to video conference, but I have used other technologies and I’ve never seen one that simply displays a huge company logo until the call is connected. Wouldn’t it provide some kind of feedback to the user to let them know a connection was being made (you know, like any other conference client out there)?
At this point, I was almost laughing at the obvious product placement, but I tried to get past it and give Fox the benefit of the doubt. Then, my proof came. As the show began another commercial break, guess what the first ad was. That’s right, the very first television ad to follow the horrendous product placement was none other than an ad for CISCO.
I guess I have to give them credit though. The ads obviously worked on me. Their name stuck in my head. In fact, I had seen that particular ad before, but thought it was another IBM commercial. Now, however, not only is it burned into my head that it’s a CISCO ad, but I’ve gone and blogged about it. Nice work guys…
posted by Christopher SchneseÂ
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