I remember the masking of branded products in shows like Art Attack, where they used Pritt-Stick, and you could tell it was pritt-stick but they taped up the name so you couldn't see it. Ditto with things like cornflakes packets and washing up liquid bottles.

I was thinking the same thing but about Blue Peter. It was the first time I'd ever heard Cellotape referred to as sticky tape.

Sticky backed plastic surely

If you want to see the extent of what can be done with product placement, I would reccomend watching "Pom Wonderful presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold". A wonderful little treatise on The practise in modern Hollywood, and where Hollywood is now, you can bet the TV industry will be there shortly.
It has already crept into ITV programming, look for the black and white P at the start of the programme, it's appearing on more and more stuff.

That is the Morgan Spurlock film IIRC. He really used all the products in the film and when promoting the film he mentioned the products like a good product placement.

I have no real problem with the process as along as it does not change the plot or is so obvious that is detracts from the programme. TV companies are trying to find ways to reduce the costs of production and if product placement helps than it has to be good to a point. Once the products start getting too obvious then it ruins the process. It has been done unpaid for years anyway.

You know its product placement when the actor puts the drink can down and the label is full on to the camera. There will be times when the line delivery is perfect, but the placement of the product is off, so it gets reshot. The problem is that product placement can ruin a film or programme because it’s moments like that which are not natural, and you know the artificiality is created to ensure that you see the name of the beer. Or the car badge. Or the perfume bottle. And so on.

Yes and when the product takes up 50% of the screen no matter how briefly. In those cases it can actually back fire against the product concerned. It will be seen as clearly product placement but too overt and so put the customers off in an annoying way. It could also harm the show if it is too extreme.

This one always sticks in my mind

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/terminator.jpg

And that was a film loaded with it, but it was pretty well handled.

Yes but they were relevant to the plot. It might not have been product placement in this case.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.

Trust me, it definitely was

That kinds of stuff doesn't bother me in the slightest. That could just as easily have been something the art department stuck in because at the time, IIRC, there wasn't exactly a huge choice of pocket computers.
It's just a small, portable computer with a blurry, barely noticeable logo. Even if you could see the logo, it's not as if Eddie's there saying "Thanks to the Atari X700cii Mk 3 I can hack this ATM. Good thing it's battery life is long because I don't know when I'll get to charge it again."

If that was product placement, I hope they asked for their money back.

It doesn't bother me either, and that image isn't really representative of a specific shot I'm thinking of. But then my memory could be a bit faulty too

I can't find a clip, which is surprising.