Apple Product Placement
- Thread starter jonpais
- Start date
stoneinapond
Veteran
Preaching to the choir. If you have Apple TV+ you most likely already own Apple products (Ido). So I wasn’t terribly aware of the frequency of product images until it was pointed out. Is this more of the “walled garden?”. I don’t know and personally don’t care so long as the actual content is watchable.
But the practice has been going on for decades as products are placed in major movies, and often to the detriment of a particular scene.
But the practice has been going on for decades as products are placed in major movies, and often to the detriment of a particular scene.
Bob Loblaw
Active member
Thomas Smet
Veteran
I don't see anything wrong with it at all. To me it would be weird if they didn't do it. It just kind of makes sense but then again I worked in marketing so something like that would be something I would suggest doing.
Its not really evil or nefarious. Its just product placement. People do not have to rush out and buy anything because of it. Its just keeping the brand.
stoneinapond
Veteran
Do you mean no non-Apple placements?
jonpais
Well-known member
I mean no product placement of Apple devices on Apple TV+. None at all on The Morning Show.
Run&Gun
Veteran
Give me a reflection of real life. Apple products are all over the real world and I see way more Apple products than Windows or Android, in real life.
Product placement doesn't bother me in the least, as long as it feels natural. I've seen plenty, especially on some ABC sitcoms, that feel like Saturday night live skits, because they are so over-the-top blatant. Some people may think I'm crazy, but The Ranch feels real life authentic(well not exactly the way you may be thinking), to me, because it's full of real life products that real people use every day and they aren't being covered up. What I hate, hate, hate are the made-up products and "greeking" of real life product logo's on shows and movies, when it's so obvious what they are, but they change it/cover it up anyway, because they don't want to give away free advertising. I have gotten hooked-up with one of the real estate reality shows and it is crazy. No brand or logos are allowed to be shown. The producer and PA spend the first half hour or so on location going through and covering every single solitary logo or brand name that might possibly be seen on-camera.
Product placement doesn't bother me in the least, as long as it feels natural. I've seen plenty, especially on some ABC sitcoms, that feel like Saturday night live skits, because they are so over-the-top blatant. Some people may think I'm crazy, but The Ranch feels real life authentic(well not exactly the way you may be thinking), to me, because it's full of real life products that real people use every day and they aren't being covered up. What I hate, hate, hate are the made-up products and "greeking" of real life product logo's on shows and movies, when it's so obvious what they are, but they change it/cover it up anyway, because they don't want to give away free advertising. I have gotten hooked-up with one of the real estate reality shows and it is crazy. No brand or logos are allowed to be shown. The producer and PA spend the first half hour or so on location going through and covering every single solitary logo or brand name that might possibly be seen on-camera.
jonpais
Well-known member
Wait a second. I thought that worldwide, 75% of smartphones are Android based. But only bad people are allowed to use Android phones in Apple shows. LOL
Then again, iPhone people are a notch up the socio-economic scale: higher income, higher education, higher representation in professional and managerial jobs according to several studies.
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stoneinapond
Veteran
I experienced the same while creating video content for a company I was working for. I was told it was a legal issue, in that showing brands and logos without permission (and compensation), and perhaps implying support from those companies for what we were doing, opened my employer to possible copyright infringements. It was a pain.
Run&Gun
Veteran
This is all anecdotal, but in my little slice of the production world, I’d say it’s easily 90%+ Apple. I rarely see android phones or windows computers. And usually even if someone does have an android phone, they’ll still have a Mac computer. And in my circle of (close) family and friends, if it’s not 100%, it’s probably 98%-99%(iPhone).
I’m typing this on an iPad and it automatically capitalized “Mac” and “iPad”, but left “android” and “windows” lowercase.
Run&Gun
Veteran
My understanding and what I’ve been told(if someone has better references, please feel free to chime in) it has nothing to do with showing a brand or logo without the owners permission and/or copyright infringement or anything else like that. It’s about not getting paid for “free advertisement”(product placement) by showing a brand name or logo. For example, If you are making a movie and your villain is driving a Chevy and runs someone over with the vehicle, there is absolutely nothing Chevy can do about it legally if you don’t obscure the Chevy symbol on the vehicle. They have zero say in how their vehicles can be used in that movie, unless they are providing the production with the vehicles and have a contract stating how their vehicles can be “portrayed”. And I actually read this many years ago, that Chevy actually has it in their contracts when they provide vehicles for movies, they can never break down on-camera, only run out of gas.
Circling back around to implying support from a company, I have heard that reason given, but again, it’s from the (making)money standpoint, not “we’re gonna get sued”. These production companies don’t want to leave money on the table and they’re afraid that if a brand that wasn’t already paying them money was given time on-camera and another (competing) company that may have been thinking about advertising with or sponsoring the show saw their competitors logo, name, etc., then they would no longer have any interest in doing business with the production company/show.
jonpais
Well-known member
Well, you won't have to worry about being sued for showing Apple products once every minute on an Apple TV show.
While not product placement, a quarantine show of Mythic Quest was shot using several dozen iPhones eagerly provided by Apple.
Roughly 94% of Americans keep a smartphone in hand while watching TV according to studies: well over half of those will search for a product they've just seen on television; and 54% of multitaskers are doing online shopping. hehe
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Phil Rhodes
Well-known member
I watched a Netflix romcom (because of reasons) called Love Guaranteed the other day which was full of iThings. Both the good guys and the bad guys were prominent users of Big Fruit's biggest desktop machines - the very same model, as it happens. It's almost as if someone carried the thing from one location to the next.
paulears
Veteran
British TV has always been split into the BBC with NO advertising at all, vs commercial TV with ad breaks - but both systems had no product placement. ITV would show a Bond movie and edit out the watches, pens and other expensive items. The BBC, who I was growing up were obsessive. Transparent sticky tape - was one brand 'Sellotape' and on children's TV, when they made things, it would be renamed back to sticky tape when everyone here calls it Sellotape - like Hoover for vacuum cleaners. They put black tape across the word Kellogs on cornflake packets, and anything with a visual brand was sanitised.
It remained like this, but was eased, up till recently - and now suddenly, at the start of TV programmes we get a warning - not the usual, 'this programme might have mental health implications, if you need hep telephone 012344' etc - but a warning saying this programme contains product placement. Once I saw this, I watched and it might be a phone - oddly Samsung, not Apple, or a new laptop, or a TV but loads of stuff - so much that I tried to find the key products, not everything.
I've had personally negative product placement - I produce pantomimes, and in one we got one of our stage managers to source a strange looking bottle for a gag - we half filled it with coloured blue water. A throw away joke in one scene. I got a complain from WKD - who have blue coloured alcohol. They were worried that they have a policy on promoting alcohol to under 16s, and were concerned that the blue colour of our joke bottle, would be misidentified as their product. We swapped to yellow, and all was well.
It remained like this, but was eased, up till recently - and now suddenly, at the start of TV programmes we get a warning - not the usual, 'this programme might have mental health implications, if you need hep telephone 012344' etc - but a warning saying this programme contains product placement. Once I saw this, I watched and it might be a phone - oddly Samsung, not Apple, or a new laptop, or a TV but loads of stuff - so much that I tried to find the key products, not everything.
I've had personally negative product placement - I produce pantomimes, and in one we got one of our stage managers to source a strange looking bottle for a gag - we half filled it with coloured blue water. A throw away joke in one scene. I got a complain from WKD - who have blue coloured alcohol. They were worried that they have a policy on promoting alcohol to under 16s, and were concerned that the blue colour of our joke bottle, would be misidentified as their product. We swapped to yellow, and all was well.