These are difficult questions, and I find it's easier to think about difficult questions when I'm enjoying a refreshing glass of Dr. Pepper.

But hypothetically if someone were giving me a big bag of cash to drop a name or a product I didn't totally in a song I was writing, I don't think I would have any compunctions about that. Look at it the right way, it's just another creative challenge.

Blatant movie product placement is dumb. I'm specifically thinking of one episode of Alias where the good guys are chasing someone who jumps into a getaway car and Sydney yells "No wait, I have a better idea, let's take those 2006 Ford Expeditions!" (might've been some other model, but definitely Ford) and it was just ridiculous.

On the other hand, the R8 in Iron Man was totally sweeeeeeeet. Couldn't really buy that someone like Tony would use Dell monitors though.

Product placement doesn't really annoy me when it's stuff like food, because otherwise it reminds me of educational films in grade school where they have boxes labeled FLOUR or CORNFLAKES, and no kid is dumb enough to believe those actually came from a store.

In videogames, it's kinda weird unless they are specifically aiming for a real-world, present-day setting. Probably because they're the most immersive and escapist of all media, and because unlike in movies, a character can't fully interact with the product as they might in real life.

I will leave product placement as a chick-lit trope to someone else.

The company I work for was into product placement in a big way. They had deals with movie studios etc. This was probably 5 or so years ago when they started with it. I'm not sure where they're at with it now since I have less visibility of the marketing area. What's going on is with new ways of digesting media, it's harder to get the traditional ads seen (Tivo etc.), so they're going back to how they originally did it in TV, but less obviously. I'm not sure if it's successful or not. I think some of it comes from marketing people grasping at straws as they try to find a way to sell. You see it with the viral videos too. Some of the thinking there is if something is too edgy or racy, but would appeal to a certain market, the advertiser can say they never meant to have it released. wink wink.

As to the questions regarding would I take the money? Hell yes. I'm getting old and losing my idealism. If someone is foolish enough to give me sacks full of money for that kind of thing, then I'll welcome them with open arms with my Tag Heuer Monaco watch glistening in the sun after I set down my Sam Adams light beer.

Most movies, books, songs and other "works of art" are created to earn a profit. Now I'm off to watch Quantum of Solace.

QoS has a lot of Sony/Ericsson cellphones in it.

People are so willing and eager to identify others in terms of their consumer choices. It works as well for movies like Juno (hamburger phone, e.g.) as it does for action blockbusters. Landscape of brands, y'know?

I find it most jarring in books, I think--if every word is deliberate, what does it say when an author chooses those kinds of allusions and references?

Here in the USA, brand names are just part of the landscape. Is the writer doing a product placement or is he just being descriptive?

David Lynch on Product Placement.

On 30 Rock, the product placement is part of the joke. It is very hamhanded, but real. Apparently they need it since viewership is low, income is not what they want it to be, but they do it VERY obviously.

Wayne on product placement

To expand on chick-lit: it really doesn't work when they write "She put on a Gucci jacket and a pair of Prada heels, and picked up her Dior bag blah blah...." That doesn't tell you anything about what these items actually look like, or say anything about the character (except maybe that she's rich enough to afford these labels). It's substituting brandwhoring for actual description and it's annoying because it implies that the label is what's important and not the quality of the materials or design or anything that actually matters.

To expand on chick-lit: it really doesn't work when they write "She put on a Gucci jacket and a pair of Prada heels, and picked up her Dior bag blah blah...."

Only if you've never seen them.

That doesn't tell you anything about what these items actually look like, or say anything about the character (except maybe that she's rich enough to afford these labels).

Which is exactly the point. They're just trying to describe a generic 'rich girl,' type. I'm not defending chick-lit here, but come on...

Chick-lit makes a good example of one of the things I wonder about--is it informational, or aspirational, or some combination?

I was just reading a crime novel that takes a break from hitting us over the head with the character's Sig-Sauer handgun to mention his Patek Philippe watch, and it kinda reminded me of the way that brand names are used in hip-hop music.

Do chick-lit readers want to be the kind of people that know brands like Gucci and Prada, even if they can't afford to actually consume them, just like with hip-hop listeners and Bentleys and Maybachs? Or are chick-lit readers actually going out and buying Gucci and Prada merchandise?

Do chick-lit readers want to be the kind of people that know brands like Gucci and Prada, even if they can't afford to actually consume them, just like with hip-hop listeners and Bentleys and Maybachs? Or are chick-lit readers actually going out and buying Gucci and Prada merchandise?

If the people selling chick-lit to us at the Famous Bookstore are any indication, it's mainly middle/lower-middle-class people who find the consumer-porn fun in a couple ways: they dig hearing about all the lush goods and they enjoy the rush of righteousness they get for being someone who can't afford them.

and thanks to MTV and the 'net, everybody knows brands like Prada and Gucci. In NYC theres a thoroughfare called Canal Street where you can buy pretty much anything as long as it's counterfeit. My youngest sister likes going there to buy "Gucci" bags.

Short version: brand names in a book are just a (sometimes) effiecient shorthand for showing how a character thinks. If they described someone wearing an American Apparel t-shirt while sipping a Jamba Juice on their way to a Radiohead show, would it be any different?

Is it different if American Apparel pays the author for the mention?

For better or for worse, it seems like brand names, like slang, are something that can really date a piece of media, or even make it age badly. There's that idea that art should aspire to timelessness, which I don't necessarily agree with. But it's interesting, I think, to set it against cultural literacy and ideas like that, which would suggest that these references have a lifespan, and one that seems to be getting shorter. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to put on my Doc Martens and haul ass to Lollapalooza.

For better or for worse, it seems like brand names, like slang, are something that can really date a piece

Well, the 'better or worse' part of that depends on the authors intent-is he trying to capture the details of a place and time forever or is he trying to make something that stands outside of that. Both are worthwhile pursuits in my opinion.

to set it against cultural literacy

Are Gucci bags and Chuck Taylors any less bits of culture than Shakespeare and Aristotle? I'm not arguing merit here, I'm arguing relevance.

I'm, for the most part, oblivious to product placement. I saw QoS this weekend and never noticed the brand of the phones.

Product placement almost always pulls me out of the necessary suspension of disbelief in movies/tv. A loving close-up of the brand name on the phone, the emblem on the steering wheel, the tag in the jacket when you take it off? All of that just sticks out like a sore thumb to me, just serving to remind me that I'm just staring at a bunch of overpaid, overdone paper dolls being manipulated by people for whom the storytelling is the lowest priority. That makes me enjoy the show so very much less.

A can of Coke on the desk that is never the focal point of the shot? Characters standing on a street corner in front of a Starbucks? That's just background. If it stays in the background, like it is every minute of every day in a big American city, I don't notice it.

Product placement nearly always seems unnatural to me in writing, except in some dialogue and in, say, a Mark Leyner style story. It's so easy and natural to write "Susan waited anxiously at the coffee shop on the corner. James had seemed so agitated on the phone, why was he now late? She was just about to go inside and grab a coffee when she saw his car turn the corner." But if I ran across "Susan waited anxiously at the Starbucks on the corner. James had seemed so agitated when he called on his iPhone, why was he now late? She was just about to go inside and grab a grande Frappuccino when she saw his Lexus turn the corner." I would read no further. I might demand my money back, even from the library.

Gucci, Prada, and the like put out dozens and dozens of handbag and shoe designs every year. I've seen a Gucci bag. I have seen many different Gucci bags. Saying just "a Gucci bag" is so non-specific as to make the description useless. And the problem with chick-lit product placement is that they think the brand name is enough description for anything at all in the book-world, not just when it's the generic shallow rich girl's point of view (where it would be totally appropriate for her to notice nothing but the brand).

I mean, I know it's escapist fantasy literature, but I'd like to have some descriptive details to work with.

I cannot recall a single brand name from QoS, and I just came out of the theatre. However, I do remember when authors mentioned brands for realism and not because they were paid. Anyway, it's not going away.

it reminds me of educational films in grade school where they have boxes labeled FLOUR or CORNFLAKES, and no kid is dumb enough to believe those actually came from a store

Repo Man! Where the generic-labelled products were, in fact, donated by Ralphs for advertising purposes.

In chicklit I do generally take it as descriptive of the shallowness of the characters - the appearance of the item isn't as important as the brand. But I haven't read that much, and what I've read has been mostly British (with much less noticeable brand name-dropping).

I assume any obvious mention of a brand now is product placement, and with that writers have lost an easy way to evoke those pop/cultural aspects without it being regarded as purely commercial.

In general the narrator is suppose to be the voice of the author or the reader, not the character. If it's first person, and the main character said, "I picked up my new Gucci purse", that says something about the character. If the narrator says, "She picked up her Gucci purse," then that only says (to me) that the author was too lazy to do research into what a fashionable purse would look like (or, potentially, was trying to avoid "dating" her book, which is sort of a misguided thing IMO).

There are two glaring examples of product placement in novels that I can think of, or that occur to me anyway.

The first is in Maggie Alderson's novels. I find them really difficult to read, because almost every line is describing how cute and very expensive her (insert designer's name here) clothing is. The whole books just read as "Look how gorgeous her life style is, she really does have everything". It actually makes me dislike the character, and pity them too. If that is what makes their life worthwhile, then I find that quite sad.

The other example I can think of is from the opposite end of the fiction spectrum. American Psycho. Where the book is 8/10ths product placement, and 2/10ths* graphic violence / pornography. Here the product placement is used exceedingly well. I don't think the book would have as much literary merit without it. The long list of brand names and descriptions makes the book intentionally boring. Pages and pages about this man describing all the products he uses to get dressed in the morning. Pages and pages of him describing what clothes he and his 'friends' are wearing. What the product placement does here is twofold. It highlights Patrick's soulnessless. His lack of depth is hammered home in his inability to look beyond the surface. In fact, it is this inability to look beyond the surface that allows Patrick to continue his violence without being caught. The other thing that the product placement does is bore the reader. This is intentional. The reader is lulled into a false state of boredom, so that the violence, when it does come, shocks all the more due to the distant and detached way that it is described.

*Yes, yes, I know I could have gone with 1/5 and 4/5, it just didn't sound as good!

I'm a sucker for product placement. I don't know that I would necessarily run out and buy something, but it's more likely than if I'd have never seen it. And I do need to see it first- like discussed above re: chick lit, brands alone do not impress me.

jonathonstrange, I don't think there's any mistaking the use of brand names in American Psycho for paid product placement, and it's a great example of appropriate use of brand names without any hint of commercialism on the part of the author (besides - what brand would pay to be associated with such a book, despite its success? Perhaps some edgy brand would now, but that was the early 90s, before the internet).

I barely notice brands in real life any more, just like I filter out ads on websites. The only times I do notice them is in NASCAR.

HAH! GOO! I forgot that about Repo Man. I suggested my brother watch that movie, and he hated it. I loved it back then.

Let's go commit some crimes...

Also, I should say, what has been mentioned before is why I've always hated song references in books. They're fine when the author describes the song, and discusses why it is important. Most of the time I find it silly, and the author would be better off talking about imaginary songs in their imaginary world of the imaginary book.

Yeah, and I think that, sometimes at least, those authors (I'm thinking here of Nick Hornby especially, for whatever reason) are presuming a set of common knowledge, a shared vocabulary, that just doesn't exist. When Juno and Bateman talk about Hammer horror and , or when Tarantino characters talk pop culture, or even when Tom Clancy name-drops military hardware, the specific references are only recognizable to a small subset of readers. But what does everyone else take away from it?