Keeping Up with "The Joneses"

"The Joneses" is a new Demi Moore/David Duchovny film coming soon to a theatre near you. Check out the trailer below. According to the synopsis, the film is about four individuals living undercover as a picture-perfect family. What their neighbours don't know (yet... I imagine), the fake family works for a marketing company and their job is to introduce new luxury-level products to neighbourhoods like theirs around the world, using undercover marketing techniques.

Fashion companies, including Reebok and Nike, do in fact have "coolhunter employees". Coolhunters seek new trends and act as brokers, bringing these trends back to their company and turning them into products for sale. As Malcolm Gladwell explains,

"The key to coolhunting... is to look for cool people first and cool things later, and not the other way around. Since cool things are always changing, you can't look for them, because the very fact they are cool means you have no idea what to look for... Cool people... are a constant."

Do big companies and/or marketing companies actually implant cool people into make-believe lives to sell a variety of products to their unsuspecting neighbours? I doubt they go that far. Although, I have heard of people being hired to walk around big malls with specific shopping bags in their hands, to influence others to shop at those specific stores, so maybe it's a slippery slope. I can't help but notice that "The Joneses" is in fact one big excuse for product placement.

In effect, "The Joneses" seem to me to be double-agents, the characters in the film are masquerading as cool people in the film trying to sell products to their neighbours while they are simultaneously trying to sell these same products to the film audience as well. While this product placement is most likely intentionally heavy-handed, to stress the message of rampant consumerism or whatever the director is going for... that doesn't erase the fact that it is still product placement.

The Oprah Effect

A documentary entitled The Oprah Effect premiered last Thursday on CNBC. The show chronicles "Oprah's unprecedented impact on business that's worth billions and goes inside businesses to find their secrets to getting on the show and how just a brief mention by the queen of influence can turn entrepreneurs into millionaires." Ever seen an "Oprah's Favorite Things" episode? [Insert screaming here.] Enough said. People go crazy for free stuff, especially free stuff that is acclaimed by THE opinion leader out there.

Oprah is not the only one out there touting certain brands and products. A similar new-ish phenomenon is the rise of "mommy bloggers." Mom-friendly brands have discovered this new marketing space - they have come to "battle for their attention, hoping for reviews from "real moms" and access to the valuable power of word of mouth." In return, influential mommy bloggers can get free stuff from companies, big media buys, and luxurious trips! Not too shabby. Statistics show that women are "responsible for $2.1 trillion of U.S. consumer spending, controlling about 80 percent of household expenditures." These mommy bloggers are now taking advantage of a system that has long targeted them with marketing messages to buy, buy, buy.

Mommy blogging has even picked up here in Ottawa: New Ottawa Mom, Postcards from the Mothership, and A Crafty Mom, to name a few. I wonder if they have had any companies (from here in Ottawa or elsewhere) contact them for promotional opportunities!

Is There a Place for Product Placement on TV?

I watched The Biggest Loser last night (I know, I know...just consider it a guilty pleasure), and I was blown away by the number of product placements during the show.  I counted no less than six throughout the two-hour episode, three for Subway and three for Extra Sugar Free Gum. Add that to the ads directly preceding the commercial breaks (for trainer Bob Harper's protein powder, for The Biggest Loser book, etc.) and you've got a whole lot of ads in a short space of time.

I am not really sure what to think or how to feel about this. Is it old-fashioned to want my TV shows to be advertisement free? Is it totally unreasonable to expect not to be bombarded with ads while I am a captive viewer?  

The UK doesn't think so. The past three months have seen a trial ban of product placements on all UK television shows - a ban which the government hopes to extend until 2012. To culture secretary Andy Burnham, it's a question of ethics, trust, and quality. "My priority has always been to make sure we maintain levels of trust between audiences and broadcasters, and protect the standards of broadcasting for which Britain is known worldwide."

So maybe that's that's the catch. Perhaps American broadcasters (and, by proxy, Canadian television which broadcasts American shows) are not as concerned with the "standards of broadcasting" than their friends across the pond. This would explain the staggering 117,979 individual placements across America's top 11 TV channels in the first three months of 2008, according to to Nielsen Media Research.

Where this leaves me, the viewer, I am not totally sure. I do think it's probably true that viewers as a whole are savvier these days (a key argument used by those in the UK who want the ban reversed), but I don't think this is necessarily something to be proud of.  

What I do know is that last night's episode of The Biggest Loser left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. And I can say for a fact that I will purposely NOT chew Extra gum or eat Subway any time soon.