Product Placement - Television Tropes & Idioms

Put your Hanes on, lace up your Nikes, grab your Wheaties and your Gatorade and we'll grab a Big Mac on the way to the ballpark.

— Stan Potolak, Space Jam

The other day, I was eating delicious Cowboy Burgers at Applebee's with my friends, when somebody pointed out to me that advertising is getting more and more intrusive. Then I took a sip of my ice-cold Pepsi.

Otherwise known as a "plug" or "writing commercials right into a show". The practice of prominently displaying or talking about a recognizable product in a program, in exchange for some consideration from the manufacturer, usually monetary.

This trope isn't always invoked for mercenary reasons; many times it just wouldn't be plausible for a character walking through a shopping mall to be confronted with nothing but Brand X, or a world set Twenty Minutes Into The Future to have suddenly lost the culture of billboard advertisements and prominently logo-ed products which defines the modern day. Real brands will be inserted to add veritas in these cases. On the other hand, even when it begins with the best intentions, contractual obligations to have the dialogue actually mention a placed product can easily turn malignant.

The least subtle version of this kind of embedded advertising is the Enforced Plug, which was common in early television.

For a particular example, see Everybody Owns A Ford.

Compare Merchandise Driven. Contrast with Brand X.

Prohibited in the United Kingdom on television by Ofcom. Imported shows obviously still show the placed products, but broadcasters aren't allowed to get paid for it. Cross-promotion in adverts is quite common though. For example, Jamie Oliver advertises Sainsbury's, but his famous mo-ped was also provided by mo-ped advertisers. This is even more obvious with certain brands of dishwasher that "recommend" a certain brand of dishwasher tablets in their TV adverts.

Examples: Computers

Due to their historical popularity among artists (like, say, production crews), distinctive stylings, and extremely rabid fanbase, computers in fiction are more likely to be a Macintosh than in real life. They can be seen frequently on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Smallville and Veronica Mars.
During the early run of 24, all the good guys used Macs and the bad guys generic wintel boxes. Recently the good guys started using HP computers. In the fourth season, the terrorists used Alienware gaming laptops, which is rather odd seeing as terrorists are usually on the run, therefore needing PCs with better battery life... unless terrorists happen to enjoy playing ''Counter Strike'' in their spare time.
- "Bomb has been planted." "Terrorists win."
Veronica Mars, especially in its final season, featured Apple laptops prominently. However, Apple obviously didn't PAY for the privilege as every time they're on screen the light-up logo on the back is blocked by something in the scene - a timestamp, a post-it, a box of liqorice (really). It's done badly in the background of one scene with an Alienware laptop, where they put a sticker of the fictional college over the small alien head - despite doing nothing about the also-distinctive moulding on either side, which is much larger than the head and in a different colour.
Who could forget Jeff Goldblum's Power Book G3 in Independence Day? He later went on to do voiceovers in tons of Apple ads.
WALL-E has a makeshift television consisting of a magnifier and an iPod, among other Apple Shout Outs. Steve Jobs used to run Pixar.
- Steve Job even had input on EVE's design, though this was limited to having him pick which concept sketch he thought fit in with Apple's current aesthetics.
Psych has, in a few early episodes, the main characters using an Alienware laptop.
The computer through which L communicates in Death Note is a Mac, although the apple logo is never actually visible. Likewise, Light's computer isn't explicitly identified but is recognizable as a Mac G4. Since the series was set Twenty Minutes Into The Future, it's a bit out of date now.
The laptop Stephen Colbert uses to vandalise Wikipedia (through the time-honoured method of Rapid Fire Typing) has a clearly displayed Apple logo. It's not exactly Product Placement, however, as he has been known to throw the laptop on the floor when he's done with it.
All of Otacon's computers in Metal Gear Solid 4 are Macs. In the first cutscene in his "office", Otacon clearly has at least one Mac Pro, an iMac (the recent version that looks like a monitor with a little base), several Mac Book Pros, and even an iPod (see the video game section below). Considering that this installment is set circa 2014, it seems like a minor anachronism, but anything in service to marketing!
An exception to Apple dominance is Dell, as the logo on its laptop lids and monitors not only is distinctive, but also stretches across the entire width of the product (especially prevalent are laptops by Alienware - which is part of Dell). This led to a glaring anomaly in the film V for Vendetta; in an early scene Lewis Prothero, "The Voice of London", is seen delivering a political commentary which describes the United States as being a state in crisis, suffering from civil war, widespread famine and verging on if not actually in economic collapse. And then we see every computer monitor bearing the familiar "Dell" logo (Dell being an American company... although they could have come from the "former United States", or Dell UK, or one of Dell's factories in Malaysia).
This also appeared in Stargate Atlantis, with the stranded Earth expedition continually whipping out the newest Dell gear for months on end, even before the Prometheus reached them.

Food and Drink

A recent episode of the reality show Driving Force had two people eating KFC and blatantly plugging it — to the point where one of them read the nutritional facts panel to declare "It has zero trans fat".
Babylon Five — Zima on the Zocalo
- Word Of God said this was a gag. "What worthless stuff will still be around 400 years from now?"
An early example was the sponsorship of the second Doctor Who movie in 1966 by Sugar Puffs, leading to out-of-place posters advertising the cereal in a supposed post-apocalyptic world.
Smallville uses this to a sickening degree. In one particularly bad episode, "Product Placement Pete" returned to the show in full force after a three-year absence, in an episode called "Hero", which was pretty much a drawn-out Product Placement scheme for Stride Gum. The gum actually had a point in the episode - it gave Pete super stretching powers - so it was shown much more often than the average Product Placement item.
- Also, Stride gum was mentioned by name over and over, never "gum" but always "Stride," and even one mention of how long the flavor supposedly lasts. At the end, a cured Pete offers Chloe some, holding it up to show the logo exactly as a person in a commercial would, and says "It's Kryptonite-free" as if that was its slogan. The entire episode was basically an hour-long Stride commercial with the cast of Smallville along for the ride.
The Argentine soap Rebelde Way doesn't miss a chance to promote some snack food or another. Amusing because it places the characters momentarily way out of character and because it's nearly impossible as a foreigner to determine what's the fuzz about.
At one point, WWE wrestlers Edge and Christian happened upon a vending machine selling RC Edge cola. Upon discovering that there's a cola "named after him", Edge declares, "Now, more than ever, Sodas Rule!"
Just about every time an episode of WCW Monday Nitro cut to the announce desk, a bottle of Surge would be plainly visible, with the label facing the camera.
At one point, X-Pac was pretty blatantly shown drinking Hansen's Energy- even on the way down the ramp before a match. In fact, his entrance video briefly featured several closeups of a Hansen's Energy can.
- This really obvious product-placement was parodied savagely on the (old) ECW by having someone 'force' wrestler CW Anderson to wrestle dressed as a bottle of power-drink. ("Cap" hat, little armholes sticking out of the bottle, really hard to get up once knocked over, etc)
Pizza Hut has a very lucrative deal with Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. While Humongous Mecha and Evil Eyes battle it out, Pizza Hut signs are in every episode and the cast eat pizza every chance they get. This particular bit of Product Placement seems to have been edited from the show's English release, because the deal was only in Japan.
The anime OVA Freedom was sponsored by Nissin Foods and apparently the only food available to the colonists on the moon is Cup Noodles.
Mai Kujaku (Mai Valentine in the English versions) drinks Pepsi in one episode of Yu-Gi-Oh. The reference was taken out in the American version. Sarbucks coffee has also appeared. Many cards in Yu-Gi-Oh also happen to be shameless promotions for Konami games (Konami owns the rights to Yu-Gi-Oh) such as Castlevania, Gradius, Contra and even Metal Gear Solid.
The newest Evangelion movie is chock full of it, with Pizza Hut (again!), Pepsi, Doritos, Yebisu beer (not Yebichu), and UCC Coffee (whew!). Most of these have accompanying packaging advertising the movie as well.
In the movie Wild Hogs, every beer, even in the biker bar, is a Michelob.
In Twister, to give the DOROTHY probes wings, the characters gather every soda can they can find. They're all Pepsi cans. In the South. You just try casually finding Pepsi cans below the Mason-Dixon line.
Enter The Matrix had a deal with Powerade. As such, there are Powerade vending machines all over the game.
Famously, Hershey's got "Reese's Pieces" into the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, after M&Ms balked on the project, thinking the movie would flop.
- Infamously, this decision likely led to Mac And Me, another movie about a kid and his alien buddy that seemed dedicated solely to shilling McDonald's and Coca Cola at every opportunity.
- M&Ms appear in the {Novelization}}, presumably because they were still in negotiations while it was being written.
Domino's Pizza boxes can be seen all over the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. This is very deliberate.
- To really drive this home, in one troper's VHS release, the movie is preceded by a Pizza Hut ad.
- Similarly, Pizza Hut signs are all over the Turtles' second NES game.
Bee Movie had Bumble Bee Tuna in a pantry for the main character to do a double take at. (Too bad they didn't also go for Bit-O'-Honey with the candy with which the opposing lawyer was taunting him later.
In the future world of Demolition Man, every single restaurant and fast-food chain has been bought out by Taco Bell. And the characters often sing commercial jingles (the only form of classic music that's clean and wholesome enough for the incredibly uptight San Angeles). In Europe, where there are no Taco Bells, all logos were replaced with Pizza Hut logos and the lines were redubbed accordingly.
The Fifth Element has a McDonald's with sexy semi-dressed cashiers.
Idiocracy is unique in that it absolutely savages the brands that get placed. For example, Carl's Jr. will take your kids away if you can't pay for your meal, Fuddrucker's restaurant steadily devolves into Buttfucker's, Costco has bloated into a city-sized blight on the landscape with its own transit system, and Starbucks now offers hookers — family style. Supposedly, Gatorade was going to be the sports drink that had completely replaced water, causing all the crops to die, but they pulled out after they saw how their product was going to be treated, so Brand X product Brawndo was used in its place.
- And their Brand X product became a real one some time ago, complete with ads with awesome voiceovers.
- The hero still managed to describe the Brawndo in the fountains as "some kind of Gatorade" at least once.
In the movie Cool Runnings, the Title Drop occurred in a scene with a prominently placed bottle of Coca-Cola. And near the beginning, there's a shot of eight sprinters about to race while in front of a MASSIVE Coke advert. It was on about the third watch that this editor even noticed the sprinters.
In the 2008 Iron Man film, the first thing that Tony Stark wants to do after returning to the US from Afghanistan is pick up an American cheeseburger. He then arrives at a press conference, opens up a Burger King bag, and proceeds to chow down.
The 2000 (modern day) adaptation of Hamlet was chock full of these, but the most glaring one may have been when the ghost of Hamlet's father walked into a Pepsi machine and disappeared.
[[The Addams Family Addams Family Values. Gomez is in the police station, ranting at how unfair life is, how certain things and concepts are 'pure evil' and is on the topic of a money-grubbing psychopath who has brainwashed his beloved brother. Meanwhile, in the back, is a product plug in the form of the police station's very bright, very noticeable Coke machine. Someone Missed The Point. That...or someone had a very delicous 'Take That' moment against Product Placement.
The infamous Leonard Part 6 features an outraged Bill Cosby confronting his daughter and her septugenarian boyfriend, and holding a Coca Cola bottle next to his face the whole time.
In Oddworld Munchs Oddysee, there are Sobe machines where you can restore your health.
Splinter Cell (you can see Sobe Adrenaline Rush vending machines in the third mission).
Tony Hawk Under Ground 2 featured Butterfinger, McDonald's, and quite a few others.
In addition to Dodge, The Burger King is an unlockable character in Fight Night Round 3 from EA Games has quite a bit; while usually themed with the sport (boxing), it seems a bit out of place where one cutscene is an actual ad for a Dodge of some sort. And for some reason Dodge has branched out from making things like cars to things like ... um, boxing gloves?. Yes, that Burger King.
Zool Ninja Of The Nth Dimension was sponsored by Chupa Chups lollipops. The first level has a "candy land" theme. One guess as to what's advertised all over the level...
The PAL version of the Biker Mice From Mars SNES game featured a ridiculous amount of advertising for Snickers. Why the candy company in question didn't advertise Mars bars instead is anyone's guess...
~~Both~~ Parasite Eve II ~~and Resident Evil 2 (the original release; the Dual Shock edition and later nixed the placement)~~ featured heavy sponsorship from Coca-Cola. In Parasite Eve II was also a usable item that restored 20HP and 80MP. Now only if drinks in Real Life actually healed your injuries.
- There's no Coca-Cola placement anywhere in any version of Resident Evil 2. Before anyone tries to remove this correction, do what you didn't do the first time and actually play the game!
A blatant example from lonelygirl15 is the Ice Breakers Sours Gum, which is shown in "Truckstop Reunion". When Daniel asks what Bree is holding, she gives the full name of the product (rather than just saying "gum"), holding the packet up so the viewers get a good look at the logo. Daniel and Jonas then beg Bree for some gum, but she puts all four remaining pieces in her mouth instead, to the boys' dismay.

Cars

One of Survivor's (specifically Survivor Outback) most infamous moments actually revolves around one of the products offered as a contestant prize - the then-new Pontiac Aztek, which was not only paired with an immunity award during the actual show (which the winner also got to sleep in) but was also thrown in as prizes for the ultimate winner and winner-up. This Troper particularly remembers how the winning contestant of the first prized Aztek wouldn't stop gushing about its "amenities," though perhaps it's understandable giving how he had been stuck in the Australian Outback. Now looked upon as a Reverse Funny Aneurysm moment for how the car ultimately fell with a dud louder than the Edsel and for just how gawd awful the Aztek looked.
On 24, Jack Bauer and associates will always drive the model of car that is their main sponsor for that season, while villains will drive other brands. It has often been commented that you can tell whether a character is actually a spy based on whether he's driving a Ford or not. (Note that in the latest season Toyota is the show's main sponsor, and the Fords are driven by bad guys.)
Heroes features repeated mentions of the Nissan Versa / Tiida. Almost all cars in the series are Nissans. Every one of the online comics begins with a Nissan Versa ad that is far bigger than the comic itself. The constant mentioning comes close to parody. Funnily enough, even though most computers in the series are Dells, the logos are taped over.
The beginning of one episode of Alias has Sydney and Vaughn chasing a bad guy through a mall parking lot. When the bad guy takes to a car, Sydney points out a vehicle that would let them continue the chase by shouting "The F-150!" You'd think that would be a rather clumsy thing to say while running after bad guys, and something like "That truck" would be more efficient.
The recent Pilot Movie for the Knight Rider remake has one chase scene which is a painful example of this. KITT is a Ford, and the cars chasing it are Fords. Throughout the chase, we get closeup after closeup of their logos. At the end of a chase, the cars pursuing KITT are tricked into driving into a fully-loaded semi truck... and stop inches from the bumper (causing this troper and his semi-driving father to both yell "Give me a break!"); God forbid a Ford be damaged, after all. Later, just to hammer it in, a General Motors car is seen as a burning wreck.
Curious about which car company is sponsoring Friday Night Lights this week? Just wait for the scene at Buddy's car dealership and see which brand gets its name mentioned.
The first series of Burn Notice was all about Sam's Cadillac. Series two glorified a Saab; one crucial high speed chase in the season finale turned on the Saab's outstanding Electronic Braking System.
The second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles features the 2009 Dodge Ram extensively, including showing off its many handy storage compartments and {{GPS} system. Except that... the show is set in 2007.
Ghost in the Shell's third movie, Solid State Society, features two Nissan concept cars which actually were revealed to the public for the first time through the movie.
Yamaha is one of the main sponsors of Nodame Cantabile. Consequently, every piano in that show is a Yamaha and melodicas are referred to as "pianicas".
And Yamaha once again masters this trope through their new hit "Vocaloid" software; a singing synthesizer that can mimic various kinds of voices, male and female, by simply entering lyrics and melodies. Each voice comes with its own cute mascot embodiment that just begs for its own anime, making it a virtually infinite doorway of product placement.
The 2007 Transformers film was plagued by this: every Autobot's altmode was a make of car owned by General Motors, except Optimus Prime, who was an (unbranded) Peterbilt Model 379 long-frame semi tractor; GM doesn't make an appropriate vehicle, and no fan would accept Optimus Prime as an H2. Then again, the whole franchise is based off a line of toys, so quitcherbitchin. Also keep in mind that, later in the movie, an Xbox 360, Mountain Dew vending machine, and a Nokia cell phone are featured... coming to life and attacking people.
- Optimus may have avoided being an H2 (Ratchet wasn't so lucky) but he almost did become a Dodge Ram in the Alternators toy line, specifically set up to allow our beloved Transformers to actually become licensed vehicles for the first time. Very well detailed vehicles, may I add - very carefully crafted to pass off as normal 1/24 scale models in their own right, but with equal attention given to their alt modes and becoming one of the highest quality Transformers toy lines of all times. The line was ultimately canceled however, mainly due to two things conspiring against it - the high price of the toys (obviously aimed more towards collectors than children) and certain car manufacturers who didn't want to play along, including Volkswagon who's still nervous about their Nazi origins and refuse to be associated with "war toys" and, as rumor has it, GM, who ordered the toy line shut down in preparation for the movie because they didn't want the robots in the disguise of their market rivals.
In the 1996 film Twister, the main characters pilot a red Dodge Ram pickup truck which carries them safely through obstacles that destroy lesser vehicles. The truck meets its end bravely marching through a cornfield into a giant tornado (yes, seriously) to deploy a tornado-measuring Mac Guffin named DOROTHY.
The 2008 Iron Man film gave us a nice look at Tony's Audi.
It is no coincidence that almost every motorcycle seen in Mad Max is a Kawasaki.
Fight Night Round 3 from EA Games has quite a bit; while usually themed with the sport (boxing), it seems a bit out of place where one cutscene is an actual ad for a Dodge of some sort. And for some reason Dodge has branched out from making things like cars to things like ... um, boxing gloves?
Some racing games are actually marketed with this in mind, like NFS: Porsche Unleashed and Automobili Lamborghini.
More technical racing games don't just have product placement for vehicles, but even for parts. Two excellent examples are the 4x4Evolution and the Need For Speed franchise after Underground, in which every single aftermarket component you can put on your vehicles, from turbochargers to car seats, is an actual product made by an actual company.

Mobile Phones

In Laguna Beach, all of the principal cast members are seen using the T-Mobile Sidekick II, and the product is also displayed prominently whenever it is used.
The Amazing Race has, on a few occasions, featured an episode where all the remaining teams are given some fancy branded cell phone for no reason other than to read a clue off of it or get a text message from home. The real reason for the phone is, of course, to say the brand name and get it on camera a lot.
- Another example was contestants getting an email from America Online.
- Or more blatantly, challenges that involve contestants not only finding the Travelocity gnome, but carrying it with them for the rest of the episode.
  - Which Travelocity turned into a commercial of its own. Wrap that one around your heads!
In Heroes, when Matt Parkman meets a mysterious African man (in Africa!), when Matt asks the man for his cellphone he says there's no service out here, then comments, "I should have gone with Sprint."
Characters on Alias all used Nokia cell phones with the "Nokia Tune" ring for the first couple of seasons. Of course, as anyone who's ever seen Trigger Happy TV knows, the correct response to that is to go "HELLO! I'm on the train! Yeah, it's really packed!"
The new Doctor Who series gave Rose Tyler a Nokia 3200 mobile phone, which was upgraded by the Ninth Doctor into a super mobile that can make phone calls through time and pick up signals where other phones can't.
- Seeing as this is the BBC, it's more that they used a recognisable prop than it being product placement (ie: it wasn't paid for). It turns into a Samsung phone without explanation in series 2. By series 3, they at least removed the logos from Martha's phone (it's a Benq-Siemens).
Jericho showed just how good a cell-phone company can really be: Sprint maintained service through 20 or more American cities being nuked and the resulting remnants dissolving into squabbling factions. (Sprint was a major sponsor of the show.)
The Final Fantasy movie Advent Children had some rather gratuitous close-ups of Panasonic FOMA P900iV cell phones, which at the time were available only in the movie's native Japan. Some of the usage is humorous; there's a scene where after a fight, the "Victory theme" from the game is heard... but it's the bad guy's cell phone ringtone.
The Matrix Reloaded had a deal with Powerade. Thus, the characters in the movie use Samsung cell phones. (Which were specifically designed for the franchise, and were also sold to the general public.)
Cloverfield features heavy Nokia product placement (an otherwise desolate subway room is quite on-your-face with Nokia's advertisement); weirdest of all, the plot even relies on the oddity that Nokia cellphone batteries apparently come pre-charged and can be conveniently taken off the shelf and used immediately without the traditional initial 12 hours charging]].
The 2008 Iron Man film has a nice close-up on the screen of Tony's Verizon phone as he's talking to Stane near the beginning.

Internet

Pizza Hut may have been removed from Code Geass, but there is still a very prominent Biglobe logo (the leading Japanese ISP) in one scene where Lelouch searches through Internet news articles to read about Zero's influence.
Speaking of Biglobe, some (authentic looking!) computer screen closeups in Digimon: The Movie show Izzy very obviously using that particular ISP to get online
X-Play is apparently required to plug Gamefly.com Once An Episode, usually after a review of a mediocre game. They have fun with it, however, by making the segue to the plug as blatantly obvious as possible. In a recent episode, they made further fun of it - Adam begins shilling for the show's Web site, but Morgan launches into her Gamefly.com plugging by accident.

Mascot Games Sometimes entire games are product placement, with the corporate Mascot as the playable character.

Cool Spot (7-up)
Avoid The Noid for the Commodore 64 and Yo!Noid for the NES (Domino's Pizza)
McDonaldland, a.k.a. MC Kids, for NES and Commodore 64 (McDonald's) averts this somewhat, in that Ronald McDonald is only an NPC. Even still, it's a game entirely based around Product Placement: if the title didn't give it away, the fact that the Follow The Money items are the trademark golden arches should.
Nearly every sports game, the "product" being the relevant organization.

Sports Stadia If you want to make your fictional sports team more realistic, have a fictional company own the naming rights to their stadium. Nearly every venue has a corporate name.

If the old name is particularly well-loved and/or the new corporate name is particularly stupid, the old name will often remain in use by the fans. Example: ~~Progressive~~ Jacobs Field, home of the Cleveland Indians. This may be impossible to do with so many new stadiums being created that have never had anything but a corporate name, such as Petco Park in San Diego. An exception is ~~INVESCO Field at Mile High~~ Mile High Stadium in Denver.
- Occasionally, a corporate name will go over well. One example of this is "The BOB", home of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Unfortunately, Bank One was bought up by Chase, so Bank One Ballpark is now Chase Field.
Aversion: Wrigley Field in Chicago. Not named after the gum company; rather, both the gum and the park are named after Phillip Wrigley, who founded the company and used to own the Cubs.
- The same is true of Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Gussie Busch actually wanted to name his park "Budweiser Stadium" but was forbidden to do so by the Commissioner of Baseball. Cue the irony. He was about three decades ahead of his time. He still got his way, indirectly. After naming his ballpark after himself, he then shortly thereafter introduced "Busch Bavarian Beer", which everyone referred to simply as "Busch".
Ironically, this is actually most prevalent in college sports. (So it's an NCAA violation if players are given any sort of rewards, but it's okay for schools to rake in millions of dollars by sending them into corporate-sponsored games played on corporate-sponsored fields in corporate-sponsored stadiums?) Every college bowl game has its own sponsor, though that sponsor will often change every few years.
In the case of major games, which are identified by their original names, this is often ignored by everyone except the broadcasters, who are paid to use the "full" name of the game.
Some of the more recent minor games have had nothing but a corporate name for the life of their existence. Sometimes this can be unwieldy, such as in the case of the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Other times, it's so smooth that it hardly sounds like a corporate bowl at all—see: Emerald Bowl (sponsored by Emerald Nuts).
At times, the corporate sponsor will take sole possession of the bowl's name, wiping away the old name completely. Done well, we get the likes of the Outback Bowl (formerly Hall of Fame Bowl...I think) and the Capital One Bowl (formally Citrus Bowl. It helps that Capital One puts such great effort into their ad campaigns and makes you feel like they really care about college football and are not just sponsoring a bowl in order to get their name out there.) When this is done poorly, we get the Chick-Fil-A Bowl. Up until a couple of years ago, this was another one that had both a corporate sponsor and an actual name. One of the most common sources of Dis Continuity, with fans often reverting to the old name of the Peach Bowl.
And then there are times where the revolving door of sponsors can make this weird. When MPC Computers took their turn with the Humanitarian Bowl, they wiped out the old name completely and it became known as the MPC Computers.com Bowl. In my opinion, this sounds better than Humanitarian Bowl, and so I was quite disappointed when it became the Roady's Humanitarian Bowl last year. The MPC Computers.com Bowl was a cool, quirky name—perfect for a game played on a blue field.
The winner is the EnergySolutions Arena, home of the Utah Jazz. What does EnergySolutions do? Nuclear waste disposal, leading to such colorful nicknames as the Glow Dome, Radium Stadium, The Isotope and, the favorite of This Troper, the ChernoBowl. A local theater troupe even made a stage production about the name. Yeah, you just can't make up stuff like this.
This troper knows that various moments are brought to 'you' by certain comapnies. But 'This Subway (moment) is brought to you by (not-Subway company)'. They're just crammin' 'em in.

Anything and Everything

Monster House has a deal with the manufacturer of "Mr. Clean" products which actually includes putting an actor dressed as Mr. Clean in shot during the "final prep" stage of each house.
Extreme Makeover Home Edition's cup runneth over with Product Placements — every little thing that goes into every house they rebuild has a brand name that is prominently displayed on-camera. Sears Roebuck in particular has a great deal with this program — in addition to frequent on-camera visits to Sears by the designers and lingering shots of Kenmore products entering the house, every episode they get a custom commercial tailored to that episode that just happens to count off each appliance, piece of furniture and even every tool used by the construction crew, under the guise of congratulating the latest recipients of ABC's weekly largesse.
Bow to Survivor, lesser reality shows, for it is king of this. Reward Challenge rewards have included camp-building supplies from Home Depot, Budweiser beer, Charmin-brand toilet paper, and so on, and so forth. And not only are the products prominently branded, but host Jeff Probst is careful to mention the brand at every opportunity. Advertisers get their money's worth from Survivor!
If it were up to the execs who broadcast American Idol, everybody would own a Ford and drink nothing but Coca-Cola all day. Mad TV spoofed the hell out of this one, using Ryan Seacrest's love for Dramatic Pauses to play the Coca-Cola commercial with Mya and Common (during the show!) over and over again.
A truly painful example comes from Who Wants To Be A Superhero, where "Erin eSurance" (the Kim Possible knock-off mascot from online insurance company eSurance) is digitally inserted into the show itself as a Voice With An Internet Connection guide to one mission. The contestants managed to be nonchalant about it, even though they were essentially getting instructions from a walking advertisement.
Obviously, any Game Show, such as The Price Is Right, that utilizes such products as prizes instead of/alongside cash.
Justified in Americas Next Top Model since the career of being a model is all about selling products. Especially Covergirl cosmetic products. Any contestant who gets their slogan wrong gets told off a lot for their lack of Genre Savvy.
The OC has several notable product placements mostly placed into conversations. While most of them can be passed off as glib references to hot new products, some are more blatant, including Sandy Cohen loudly declaring, "I'll book our flight on American Airlines right now".
Big Love included a bunch in the first episode, including a plug for Land's End delivered by the youngest boy in the family.
Home Improvement made use of this trope in the Show Within A Show "Tool Time", where Tim and Al often plugged products by the fictional Binford hardware company. One episode dealt with Tim's reluctance to promote an inferior Binford product on his show.
Smallville doesn't just pimp gum; it advertises eveything else to the point that (before he was Put On A Bus) Pete was nicknamed 'Product Placement Pete' by Television Without Pity for mentioning everything from Lemon Pledge to a shameless push of the Smallville soundtrack, in character, to boot! After he left, though, the Product Placement remained glaringly obvious, with Chloe saying things like "We'll take my Yaris." rather than "Let's use my car." and the directors seemingly going out of their way to show unnecessary close-ups of the characters' cell phones as they dial, to show off the nifty Verizon logos.
Lampshaded on the third season premire of Eureka; The new chairwoman of GD announces its first corporate sponsor, as several crates bearing Degree [the deodorant sponsoring the season] logos are wheeled in. Degree is actually sponsoring the show, insisting on heavy placement of ads and an entire upcoming episode where deodorant saves the day.
An episode of WCW Raw that had a fairly drawn out skit involving Maria working out on a Bowflex in as little clothing as possible, with someone dropping by to comment on how great the Bowflex is and how it'd help to improve Maria's in ring skills. The particular was even eventually sold on WWE's website autographed by Maria! The fact that the next time something involvied WWE and a Bowflex was the Chris Benoit story, though, {{Funny Anyeurism Moment well...}}
In Pokemon, James occasionally has a set of reference cards if Team Rocket happens upon a new Pokemon. When 4Kids still had the anime, they'd sometimes cut these scenes out because of potential advertisement to the card game.
- However, there's an even bigger product placement in two Sinnoh episodes—one has Meowth use a Wii Remote, and the other the Nunchuck attachment!
Michael Bay movies take a lot of heat for this. For example, the semi-futuristic film The Island features visible product placement in nearly every scene — including a (now) out-of-date Xbox logo.
The James Bond film Casino Royale was obviously sponsored by Sony, because Bond uses a Sony Ericsson cell phone, a Cybershot camera, a Walkman, a Blu-ray recorder, and a Vaio laptop.
- Not just sponsored, but produced and distributed by Sony.
- Bond also takes care to show off his watch:
  Vesper: Rolex?
  Bond: Omega.
  Vesper: Beautiful.
- Nearly every Bond movie ever made endorses specific brands of cars (Aston Martin most famously), vodka (Smirnoff), champagne (Bollinger), firearms (Walther PPK and P99) among other things.
Another film: Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby, which, being a NASCAR film, was chock-full of it. It was, however, taken to ridiculous heights to lampoon the whole practice (while still indulging in it), with a sportscaster noting that the title character "never met a sponsor he didn't like", and Ricky Bobby himself noting that one sponsor requires him to always mention them even in his family's mealtime prayers.
- Let us not forget that the film itself is interrupted at one point by an Applebee's commercial. Really.
2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is rife with placement, including a Dodge logo on the nose of the Fantasticar, but it also spoofs it with Johnny's over-logoed uniform near the beginning of the film.
Will Smith's character sure loves telling people about his 'vintage 2004 Converse sneakers' in I Robot. That is far from the only product placement...
2001: A Space Odyssey was notorious not only for using Product Placement, but also for having several prominent products fail by the time 2001 rolled around.
Blade Runner - Atari, Pan Am, etc.
The Mothman Prophecies featured a scene, prominently featured in the TV spots and trailers, where the creepy voice on the telephone correctly guessed what the protagonist was holding in his hand. The choice of Chap Stick could work as examples of Product Placement, Narm and Nightmare Retardant.
The Back To The Future movies. Hoo boy...
- Pepsi Free (hilarious now that it's rebranded as Caffeine Free Pepsi)
- DeLorean motors
- The main theme of I and III resulted in cameo appearances by their artists (Huey Lewis in the first, ZZ Top in the 1880s doing an acoustic version of their song in III).
- Texaco comes to mind; the only location besides the courthouse that's in 1955 and 2015 Hill Valley. They would probably have worked it into III as well if the lack of gas stations in the wild west hadn't been a plot point.
- Calvin Klein
- Nike
- Pizza Hut
- AT & T
- Mattel
  - And despite being set in 1885, Part III managed to work in a product placement, too; the pie tin that Marty throws like a Frisbee (another trademarked item, by the way) is from the now-defunct Frisbie Pie Company. Yup, they were real.
The future of Minority Report may be a grim one for those accused of crimes they haven't yet committed, but it has plenty of opportunity for The Gap, Burger King, Guinness, American Express, Aquafina, etc.
The film Ed TV, which anticipated reality television, was about a man named Ed who signed up to be on a television show that would consist of broadcasting his entire life, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. As the network never interrupted the broadcast to show commercials, they made money by placing advertisements in scrolling text along the bottom of the television screen. The film itself shows these advertisements whenever a television appears, and as "EdTV" becomes more and more popular, the advertisers change, changing from local businesses to organizations with deeper pockets. By the end of the film, even "The Islands Of The Bahamas" are buying ad space on "EdTV". According to the commentary the creators were even lucky to get the organizations to allow their brand to be shown on the screen, because of the satirical stance of the movie.
Just try to put a number on the shameless product placements in Disturbia.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. The on-the-run scientist teams up with the subway-hiding Turtles to brew up some hideous looking chemical gunk to make some evil monsters go away. In a Bart Simpson's glass held very close to the camera. Thus conveying the message that Bart Simpson will change your genetic structure.
Any game with "licensed music".
In Viewtiful Joe 2, when Alastor appears, he refuses to introduce himself, declaring that if you (the player) wants to know who he is, you should go pick up a copy of Viewtiful Joe (complete with a pop-in image of the game box) from your nearest Game Store's Bargain Bin. This is also a case of Lampshade Hanging and No Fourth Wall.
Inverted in Crazy Taxi: Sega had to pay to use the logos of Pizza Hut, KFC, Levi Strauss, The GAP, etc.
Super Robot Wars (any number of Merchandise Driven Humongous Mecha shows)
The Xbox 360 version of FIFA 2008 contains PlayStation 3 ads. Apparently, Sony is a FIFA sponsor, and you have to have ads of sponsors in a FIFA game. Oh, the irony.
Racing games are packed with product placement… And fans wouldn't have it any other way, since this gives you the chance to pretend you can afford to drive around in an entire garage of hopped-up cars way beyond your financial means:
- The Gran Turismo series is chock-full of in-game advertising, justified because they're the racing teams' sponsors. Example include the Audi R8 (Infineon), the JGTC Loctite Skyline, the Mercedes-Benz 190E (Hugo Boss), the Audi TT-R Touring Car (Red Bull and Walkman), the McLaren F1 GTR Race Car (Petrofina), and the BMW V12 LMR (Dell). And on top of that, there's a Gran Turismo 4 ad within Gran Turismo 4: the Playstation Pescarolo C60◊.
EA's Need For Speed franchise is one big exercise in car and music product placement. Underground 2, just to name a few, had Snoop Dogg, Mudvayne and Xzibit (while still on his Pimp My Ride fame) in the soundtrack, had some Burger Kings and Best Buys scattered around the map, and billboards from tens of advertisers all over the place.
Nintendo's 1080° Snowboarding had characters wearing brand-name clothes while riding brand-name snowboards, the sequel even had brand-name music and a music video.
Similarly, Wave Race 64 had sponsorship from Kawasaki. But interestingly enough, they didn't sign on for the rerelease on the Wii Virtual Console, which meant that all the Kawasaki ads in the game had to be replaced with ads for... the Wii.
Sonic Adventure 2 replaces Sonic's trademark shoes with a pair from the brand Soap. And yes, there are Soap Shoes ads in quite a few of the levels.
- It should be noted that Soap shoes aren't really normal shoes, they've got a sideways bite out of the sole so that you can “grind” on railings and stuff, which was exploited as a gameplay mechanic. Later games gave Sonic his old shoes back but kept the grinding move.
Tom Clancys Splinter Cell uses Sam Fisher's electronic organizers to place products. The first game, for example, gave him a Palm OPSAT, while the second game gave him a Sony Ericsson phone.
Pikmin 2 was full of brand-name products, though in this case, it helped add realism. On the other hand, Olimar and the ship were somewhat more likely to say something positive about a treasure that had a logo on it...
Metal Gear Solid 4: Snake has an iPod, the unbranded "book" of previous games is now a Playboy, and at one point Otacon breaks the fourth wall to talk up the PS 3's Blu-ray drive.
- It doesn't end there. Several other products are prominently displayed, including Sony Ericsson phones, Re Gain energy drinks, and as a friendly Shout Out to their competitor Ubisoft, you can unlock Altair's costume from Assassin's Creed for camoflauge. Don't even bother trying to count all the Apple logos in Otacon's Hacker Cave.
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on the Nintendo 64 contains a bit of product placement to itself, of all things: during the mission inside the frieghter the Suprosa, when Dash locates the supercomputer containing the new Death Star plans, it will greatly resemble an N64 with a Shadows cartridge plugged in if viewed from a sufficient distance.
City Of Heroes recently introduced "optional in-game advertising" which replaces some of the fictional advertisements found throughout the city with those of real products. At the time of this writing, only one real advertisment is available: a giant picture of a shoe with the words "Jeter Clutch" above and to the left of it.
The protagonist of the Pokemon games has Nintendo's current TV-gaming-system in his room. Ranging from Super Nintendo, over the N64 and the Gamecube to the Wii.
Battlefield 2142 has billboards on many of its maps, served with real ads like a 3D-rendered page banner. The ads were targeted, so each player would see something different in the same space. Penny Arcade makes light of it here.
Meta? One of the goals in Goldeneye 64 is a security tape. In a box. Looking at the tape in your inventory will reveal it spinning, like many objects. The front is a promo for the Goldeneye movie. True, they did have the rights to the image...but it still spins this troper's brain.
KateModern contains frequent product placement. In most cases it serves to make the show more realistic, although in the case of Tampax, it became a little odd (who makes a video about the brand of tampon they use?). Then there's "Skittle Yourself", which actually asks viewers to create their own Skittles adverts and put them online. Go on, it'll be fun!
The directory inquiries service 118 118 has a daily advert in British newspaper Metro in the form of a short comic strip. Bizarrely, many of these strips feature blatant plugs for other products -product placement in an advertisment. And yes, this means there are now ads inside of other ads.
One e-trade commercial has the man onscreen state that he made enough money using the service to buy seven monitors; six to watch the market, and one to "regulate chumps in Gears Of War."
A Kellogg's SmartStart Healthy Heart features women doing healthy things like yoga, exercising, and playing Wii Sports.

Parodies:

Arrested Development: Two characters meet at Burger King and discuss how a show within a show is getting a big endorsement from the restaurant for mentioning its name. Naturally, the conversation itself features the characters repeatedly saying the name "Burger King" and hawking the restaurant's services like free drink refills, until even the narrator joins in. Indeed, the writers originally were going to call this episode "Tendercrisp Chicken Comedy Half-Hour," after the sandwich heavily advertised in background signage.
The Truman Show had the protagonist's wife constantly hocking merchandise, not to mention every single inanimate object in the “world” being product placement. It takes a dark turn near the end, as she does it at the wrong moment - Truman, who's beginning to work out the truth, hisses, "What are you saying?" and attacks her.
- There were also two guys who's entire job on the Truman Show was to stop Truman at a place, frame him properly for a camera to include a shot of a certain poster for a few seconds, then let him go. Other product-based oddities abounded in the world as well.
  - Well, the Truman Show is essentially a deconstruction of Reality Shows and 50s Sitcoms in general. The scene where he notices the repetition of the cars on the loop. is priceless.
  - Except for the fact that you can't deconstruct a genre that's yet to arise - The Truman Show predates the wave of modern Reality Shows.
Spoofed brilliantly in the movie Waynes World, as Wayne and Garth rant about not selling out and staying true to themselves, while showing off various products.
In Return Of The Killer Tomatoes, breaking the Fourth Wall, the director informs the characters that there isn't enough money to finish the film. He blames the generic products that have been shown throughout the movie to that point. So, for about five minutes after that, logos appear on various objects and all dialog is loaded with obvious product pitches, ending when a character asks, "do we have enough money to finish this yet?"
From Kung Pow Enter The Fist - "Taco Bell, Taco Bell, Product Placement for Taco Bell..."
A series of "Turn off your damn mobile phone" trailers in the United Kingdom from the Orange Film Funding Board showed various celebrities pitching ideas to the board. It then showed a panel of execs, mangling whatever idea they are given to include mobile phone product placement, ending with the line "Don't let a mobile ruin your movie". Ironically, Orange actually went on to fund one of the joke stories because they liked the idea, hence all the mobile usage in A Cinderella Story.
- Probably the best of these so far was a high-budget example, where Stephen Seagal approaches the golfing execs with an idea for a romcom, and the execs retort that he only knows how to do action. Seagal chases after the chief exec insisting it can be done, but the irony is that he's chasing him in a very action-movie fashion, only transposed to a golf course (beating up minions, a car chase in golf carts). There's the obligatory phone bit, but it ends with Seagal blowing up the exec's helicopter just after he dismisses the idea for the last time.
In Mel Brooks' Spaceballs, Product Placement is merged with the Hollywood Merchandising Machine to create a brilliant parody: All the products featured bear the movie's logo. Spaceballs The Doll. Spaceballs The Bedsheet. Spaceballs The Breakfast Cereal. Spaceballs The Flame Thrower... and so forth. Perhaps ironically, Spaceballs The Lunchbox is just a Transformers lunchbox with a Spaceballs logo taped on it.
- The tie-ins are clearly intended as a jab at the extensive merchandising around the Star Wars license.
  - It was revealed in a 20th anniversary magazine that Mel Brooks actually had George Lucas' blessing to parody Star Wars (which explains why Brooks was never sued by Lucasfilm) — on the one condition that there be absolutely zero merchandising of the film. Therefore, the ridiculous product placement of (non-available) Spaceballs merchandise was intended to tweak Lucas' nose over this.
  - The other reason Brooks was never sued was that Spaceballs was a parody that's protected under the first amendment, making getting Lucas' blessing completely unneeded, but hey!
In an episode of Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law, Harvey Birdman's drink suddenly turns into a can of Tab. Then there is an extended live-action sequence where Birdman and a 5-foot can of Tab frolic on the beach.
Captain Amazing, from Mystery Men, is a commercially-sponsored hero, his entire costume covered in advertising logos. (This was in 1999, eight years before the Fantastic Four gag above.)
The 30 Rock episode "Jack-Tor", in which the characters' dealt with product placement on the Show Within The Show, cleverly lampshaded the use of product placement on the actual show.
Jack: These Verizon Wireless phones are just so popular, I accidentally grabbed one belonging to an acquaintance.
Liz: Well, sure, 'cause that Verizon Wireless service is just unbeatable. I mean, if I saw a phone like that on TV, I'd be, like, "Where is my nearest retailer so I can get one?" [looks straight into the camera] Can we have our money now?
In Looney Tunes: Back in Action, the main characters are wandering through a Nevada desert until they find a Wal-Mart smack dab in the middle of it. When D.J. Drake remarks how stupid it is, his love interest (a studio executive) simply replies "Product Placement. No one notices that anymore" and no one else cares, since they are thirsty and tired. When they leave, they are loaded with stuff and Bugs Bunny says "It was very nice of Wal-Mart to give us all of these Wal-Mart products for saying "Wal-Mart" so many times."
Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge spoofs the levels that some television personalities will stoop too to shill products; every episode featured the host, Alan Partridge, hawking cheap tat with a complete lack of subtlety. However, as Alan worked for The BBC - which takes quite a dim view of these kind of practices, being a public broadcaster with strict rules about this sort of thing - this gradually became a plot point; the Christmas Special focussed heavily on Alan's feeble attempts to sell Rover cars under the nose of his savvy boss, who was a guest on the same show.
Top Gear parodied the concept a couple of times, always starting off with a Lampshade Hanging citing BBC policy which prohibits advertising:
- In one episode, Top Gear managed to borrow a Ferrari Enzo from Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, but only under the condition that they plug his book. Jeremy Clarkson then mentions that he told Mason they couldn't do that, but he'll "slide in a couple of references no one will notice". The review segment had Jeremy Clarkson interviewing Nick Mason while both of them are holding the book, in a slightly forced, exaggerated and stereotypical manner not unlike the most blatant plugs on a TV program. Clarkson also used references to Pink Floyd albums in his review of the Enzo, and the Stig had the car's stereo playing Another Brick in The Wall, Part II while he did the hot lap. At the end of the day, Top Gear managed to review the Enzo, Mason got his book plugged, and the audience gets a good laugh out of the blatant product placement on television, everybody wins! Yay Top Gear!
- When they did the 24-hour Britcar race, they weren't allowed to have sponsor decals on their car. Instead, they added logos of made-up sponsors Larsen's Biscuits and Penistone Oils, with Clarkson saying they wanted to "look more authentic." Top Gear being Top Gear, they "accidentally" placed the decals in such a way that if the car's doors were swung open, the letters would read "Arse Biscuits" and "Penis". Throughout the segment the team was shown talking while resting their elbows on the car's open doors for the purposes of "sponsor airtime".
A few episodes of Sealab 2021 are choked with fake ads for Grizzlebee's, a riff on Applebee's, TGI Friday's, and other US-based "down-home neighborhood family restaurant" franchises. "Grizzlebee's: You'll wish you had less fun!"
- And at that, the episode "Tinfins" was itself one long advertisement for a fake movie, interspersed with advertisements for a fake restaurant.
The Josie And The Pussycats movie gleefully used hyperbole to show how absurd product placement can become. Examples include an advert for Evian mineral water on an underwater wall in an aquarium, and a giant McDonalds 'M' on the World Trade Center. Plus, if this troper recalls correctly, ads on the wall of a hotel SHOWER. (Creepy). The plot itself featured the titular girlband (unwittingly) playing subliminal adverts in their music as part of the villains scheme to brainwash teenagers into buying more stuff.
It was noted that there was a tremendous amount of product placement in the Arnold Schwartzenegger film Total Recall, especially in the middle of the city square. It makes fun of this a bit when the main character is on Mars, and a "USA Today" newspaper vending machine appears, only the label says "Mars Today" and is in red instead of USA Today's blue.
In another Ahnold movie, Last Action Hero, at one point the car crashes through a semi-truck clearly labeled "Coca-Cola", which is driving out of what appears to be the bottling plant.
One episode of A Bit Of Fry And Laurie was filled with references to something called "Tidyman's Carpets", in the most ham-fisted way possible.
This Zero Punctuation episode.
Futurama made a few jokes mocking this by putting advertising in dreams.
The Adventures of Rocky And Bullwinkle (you know, The Film Of The Series, which doesn't exist?) mocks this trope, excepting when making sure the audience knows that the characters use Hewlett-Packard computers.
The Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Boost Mobile" revolves around the title brand of cell phone, but with more than ehough Adult Swim-style self-conscious mockery.
In the DC Comics series 52, Booster Gold, a superhero with a reputation for being self-interested, tools around Metropolis with a dozen logo decals stuck to his costume. (He later learns his lesson. And then explodes. But gets better.)
Seven words: Harold And Kumar Go to White Castle.
- Note for non-Americans: White Castle is a restaurant chain in the US.
  - Oh my god, seriously? I've thought it was a made-up brand since I first saw it four years ago!
Two recent Sprint commercials have made fun of this, presenting their commercials for the Instinct phone as movie trailers. They're actually called something like "the finest product placement movie this summer", with "finest" often replaced for a more genre-approriate word (such as "scariest" or "heartwarming").
American Dad parodies it in "Black Mystery Month", when Steve and Stan stop at a Burger King:
Steve: Why did we have to come to a Burger King to read the map?
Stan: Because the economics of television have changed! (awkwardly) Have it...your way!* Parodied by Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report: His coverage of his own 2008 presidential run was "sponsored by Nacho Cheese Doritos", although Frito-Lay never actually paid him for it, and he spent several months mentioning the iPhone at every possible opportunity in the hope that Apple would send him one for free. Apple did.

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