Wednesday, January 24, 2007

MEDIA CULTURE -- DID YOU KNOW?

MotherJones Magazine has a terrific column called Ad Nauseum and in it's January/February 2007 issue they highlight some unbelievable media statistics including the following:

In 2005, there were 108,000 instances of product placement in television programming—up 30% from 2004.

he 2005 season of nbc's reality show The Contender had 7,502 instances of product placement—adding up to 11 hours and 57 minutes of screen time.

Placing ads inside video games is expected to be a $1 billion industry by 2010.

When Dateline NBC recently asked children to choose between a banana and a rock with a Scooby-Doo sticker on it for breakfast, nearly all chose the rock.

A recent Broadway production of Sweet Charity was rewritten to plug Gran Centenario tequila. José Cuervo described the change as "elegant, organic, not forced."

Advertisers spend more than $12 billion a year marketing to kids. The average American child is exposed to 40,000 ads per year.

References to "a killer coat of Lipslicks" and other Cover Girl products were worked into Cathy's Book, a novel for 12- to 17-year-old girls published in October.

Great Moments in Product Placement

1965 A Charlie Brown Christmas is conceptualized and sponsored by Coke.

2000 FedEx says of its supporting role in Castaway, "We're a character in this movie."

2005 Target buys all ad space in the August 22 New Yorker; its logo appears tore than 1,200 times in the issue.

Read them all