This story in today’s NYT repeats a theme (and several of the actual examples) of “Ad Nauseam” a piece that Dave and Elizabeth did in our current issue on how “Madison Avenue is scrambling to stick ads anywhere it can, from children’s books to bathroom stalls.”
My personal favorite examples of product placement include:
After Israel bombed Lebanon last summer, Johnnie Walker put up billboards in Beirut showing a damaged bridge with the slogan “Keep Walking.” A spokeswoman said the ads were meant to “capture a popular mood about moving forward.”
A recent Broadway production of Sweet Charity was rewritten to plug Gran Centenario tequila. José Cuervo described the change as “elegant, organic, not forced.”
In Instant Def, an online movie made by Snickers, members of the Black Eyed Peas work in a Snickers factory and battle an evil rapper who is a “fabrication justification of some corporation’s imagination.”
But the whole thing is a hoot. Read it here. And sources here.
