Product Placement, Brand Advertising, and Political Agendas in Media

Whether you realize it or not, you’re constantly being advertised to.

Social media is a good example of this, with products and brands being constantly drilled into your lifeless eyes as you spend fleeting hours scrolling endlessly through meaningless posts you’ll forget a second later, yet living on in the deep recesses of your brain. What’s the influencer’s skincare routine? Which sneakers are Kylie Jenner wearing today? You already have an iPhone X, but did you notice that all the most popular celebrities have it in the newly released Rose Gold edition? And so the age old tradition of flaunting one’s wealth for social acceptance takes new form in the modern age, even if its perpetuators are ignorant of it.

Though it helps and it hurts in its turn, social media is not, at its core, a friend of anyone, as it hungrily feeds off our insecurities and evolutionary need for social acceptance to sell us, whether intentionally or not, an agenda. This holds especially true for young women. For example, it unfortunately is the nature of social media that sex-related content gets more attention. A hiking photo in which the influencer wears Eastern Mountain Sports gear and an expensive, multifunctional backpack predictably gets less attention than a “hiking photo” of an influencer taking her top off in front of a mountain and wearing Lululemon leggings. Lululemon profits from this preposterous scenario, but does anyone else? Such is the nature of human evolution that hundreds of thousands of likes translates as “this is what people want you to be”, and so young women are pushed more and more into a role of oversexualizing and oversharing on the internet, which is already a dangerous place for teenagers to be. Speaking of a dangerous place to be, I find it only fair to briefly touch on the school-shooter-bootcamps that are unregulated forums, where angry, insecure young people find an echo chamber of like minded individuals who would once never have found a place that would have allowed this kind of rhetoric. In many ways, social media is a festering, rotting swamp married to the cruelty of late-stage American capitalism to birth a twisted version of unfeeling greed and conceit that heretofore only existed in Lord of the Flies and 1984.

Today, however, I will not be talking about social media but about movies and television, and now that the imminent, looming destruction of morality this will result in has been mentioned, we can look a little more lightheartedly about the ways in which companies advertise themselves to you and how successful they were in being subliminal.

Most Successful Product Placement

Good product placement feels like part of the story. What makes Stranger Things so good at this is that it heavily incorporates 80’s nostalgia, so mentions of Dungeons and Dragons or The Clash tie into the plot. When Eleven grabs boxes upon boxes of Eggo waffles from the freezer section, it feels like a charming and comedic moment reminiscent of young children, regardless of background, loving sugary breakfasts, and it reminds the audience of their own childhood, wishing to raid the grocery store of its junk food without parental supervision. But Eggo is very much still alive and continuing to grind out frozen waffles, and not only did they profit off this product placement, but they produced card games as well as special edition boxes of Eggo’s for all fans of the super-popular show. The “joke” landed so well that some merchandise of Eleven is even sold with her clutching her beloved waffles, continuing to make Eggo an unsuspecting buck.

Worst Product Placement

This one may not be as in-your-face as some others, but it’s extremely jarring: In Skyfall, James Bond orders a Heineken. Any viewer would know, whether they’ve seen any Bond movies or not, that his signature drink of choice is a dry martini “shaken, not stirred”. It’s one of his two most famous phrases. Some fans even get excited to see him ordering alcohol, anticipating this tradition that ties the character together regardless of the actor portraying him. This product placement feels cheap and artificial. In fact, one might even have to suspend disbelief to even accept that Bond would patronize a bar that serves Heineken, a beer that, while light and refreshing (unsponsored), typically costs $2 per bottle, as we’ve been constantly served the message that Bond only drives the most expensive cars and wears the newest and most fashionable clothing. In fact, it’s somewhat unrealistic to even portray the kind of woman Bond dates approaching a man drinking Heineken.

Worst Product Placement II

Some product placement is bad because it doesn’t fit into the storyline or is out of character, but I also had to mention product placement that is bad simply because it’s too heavy-handed, making the movie feel like a commercial. Transformers: Age of Extinction makes you feel like you’re on The Truman Show. As we learn about an alien alloy that can transform into literally anything, a cold, imposing business tycoon demonstrates its abilities by turning it into a Beats by Dr. Dre speaker, and saying “Do you like music? The pill”. Maybe this would have worked if the character were a materialistic, shallow teenager, but then again it’s hard to imagine using an indescribably powerful alien alloy this way- even then the character would probably have opted for a car or a robot. The odd juxtaposition of high budget production value and horribly written dialogue makes this feel like a Superbowl commercial… but then again, so do most of the Transformers movies. I’m sorry.

What Do We Do About This?

The question is whether we even can do anything about this. Society as a whole, I believe, does have the power to reshape our constant brainwashing of the masses for financial gain, but it seems like that won’t happen without major economic reform, and something that COVID has taught us is that right now as a whole we care more about money than the good of the people. On the individual level, as animators and producers of media, I’m not sure if we have any power in this. The way the industry runs right now, entertainment endeavors must make money somehow, and so do we. Oftentimes we can’t be picky about our projects, especially early in our careers. I do, however, think that it’s wise to be aware of the full scope of the impact that this has on audiences, and if we can, make unethical advertising and product-pushing a dealbreaker. For example, I would rather work on a project that casually advertises Eggo than one that pushes a political agenda I don’t agree with- for example, I would probably turn down work on any of the endless propaganda-filled American-made Vietnam War movies that exist to brainwash the masses. Which leads me to my next topic:

How Does the Media Influence Politics?

I will give one example of this but it’s the most glaringly obvious one to me. As an American, I will write this from an American perspective, and please forgive me for getting into my own views here.

America relies on blind, feverish nationalism to prevent its citizens from ever questioning its war crimes, racism, failing economy, and lethal healthcare system. Roving masses of citizens claim that changing or adapting any part of society is “Un-American” and therefore inherently wrong. It is easy to work the unquestioning droves of zombie-like Trump worshippers into a rabid fever just by repeating “America” or “America is Great” “God loves America” or any form of “love your country”, thus preventing them from actually listening to any kind of policies or questioning whether their ideals align with those of their preferred candidate. They refuse to criticize or question anything that they’ve been told, and have been convinced that those who wish to see America become a better place for everyone actually hate America because they want to change it. In part, this is not their fault, but that of the extremely effective propaganda that’s existed in American media since the middle of World War II.

American nationalism didn’t exist as it does today until World War II. During this time, the government needed to convince people not only to buy war bonds but to support the war effort by using less metals and otherwise adapting their lifestyle to allow more resources to be allocated to the military. It’s almost unimaginable today that the American public would be susceptible to changing their lifestyle even the smallest bit whether it inconveniences them or not, judging by the adamant anti-maskers, but the government was very effective at doing this through radio, movies, posters, stage shows, and so on. Up to this very point I do not think the agenda pushed was unethical. But unlike in the United Kingdom, militaristic patriotism in media didn’t die after the war.

I personally believe this was to prevent the public from questioning the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, a crime against humanity so heinous, so unbelievably evil, that I can’t fathom a harsh enough punishment for it. If Japan had dropped nuclear bombs on New York and Boston, Japan would no longer exist. But somehow the USA, leading by example as always, killed millions of innocent men, women and children with an unfathomably powerful weapon and still managed to falsely claim that this was necessary to end the war and paint themselves as heroes for it. I suspect that nationalist propaganda was intentionally perpetuated to the public, still riding high on the happiness of seeing their beloved husbands and sons return home, so that they didn’t become disillusioned with the country’s war effort that they’d put their lives on hold and lost loved ones to support. Unfortunately, at the time it was acceptable to mix a lot of this nationalist propaganda with xenophobia and racism. As one can still see in war movies and games (See: Call of Duty) today, our enemies were reduced to racist caricatures to dehumanize them and wipe away any concerns about their families, homes, and lives.

Beloved American war movies like Rambo and Apocalypse Now are a continuation of this. The Vietnam War was so heavily protested that the government was forced to create a narrative of the whole of the anti-war movement being Communists, unwashed drug users, and immoral sex fiends. Even modern Vietnam War movies carry on a narrative of dehumanizing the Vietnamese people and depicting bloodthirsty white men as badass. Only now we’re just starting to see some that address the post-traumatic stress disorder many soldiers suffered from, but it’s still pretty taboo to depict the pointlessness of the war and the crimes America committed during it.

This long history of propaganda-induced American nationalism leads us to where we are today, with masses feverishly worshipping that which they don’t bother to understand and accepting glossed-over history textbooks as truth. This brings us to the palpable tension between the two-party system, waiting to snap at any moment. This brings us to billions going to the military- imposing a threatening presence in other countries, setting up puppet dictators- rather than towards universal healthcare for our own people. And this long, ugly history of nationalism and xenophobia in media continues to this day- I mentioned Call of Duty earlier. I’m not saying the games themselves aren’t fun, but the early ones pretty clearly harken back to the Bush era with their gibberish scribbles of pseudo-Arabic on the walls of forts where the player hides to kill vaguely Middle Eastern looking men with assault rifles. All of this brings us to where we are today, to the racism and unflinching patriotism that go hand in hand to create so many problems.