Public Product Placement
by Ken Mayer
During the first quarter of 2008, Nielsen Media Research reported 3,291 occurrences of product placement on the American Idol TV show. That Nielsen meter clicked every time we saw an image like judges Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell with Coca Cola logo drinking glasses during the show.
No wonder the Federal Communications Commission is looking into the practice, particularly as it’s used in children’s programming. Often referred to as Trojan Horse advertising, product placement is not limited to the small screen.
We, as consumers, are pretty savvy about advertising and its poses a constant challenge to marketers. We “Tivo” past the commercials when we time shift and surf the web on our laptops while we watch in real time. But that’s TV and we expect a sales pitch.
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| Public Transit or Rolling Billboard? |
But outdoors is another matter. Seems to me, that as Omaha looks at the electronic billboard issue, where advertising is expected, we ought to consider those Trojan Horses as well. Modern reproduction technology has made possible ads bigger than a horse, and even bigger than a house.
I think we ought to start considering what we will tolerate as public product placement.
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| Sponsorship or Co-op Advertising? |
A lawyer friend of mine once suggested an interesting legal question is this regard. He reasoned that since MAT used the Interstate Highways and other routes subject to Federal Aid, therefore the buses, in effect, were rolling billboards and subject to the Highway Beautification Act.
Consider the huge Olympic swimmer on the Mutual of Omaha headquarters tower. Not technically advertising I suppose, it merely recognizes that company’s sponsorship of the swimming competition. But whether it’s Nebraska Football, the College World Series or the Olympics, there is lots of money being made by private commercial enterprises when the become associated with these events as entertainment.
This is a gray area and we should be clear about what we will permit and not permit in order to avoid any more of the contentiousness that digital billboards have raised.
On the positive side of public walls are the mural projects and I’m all for doing something to make a blank wall more interesting.
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| Winter Quarters Bookstore |
A few worth a look are the north side of the Winter Quarters Bookstore on North 30th street that depicts the history of Florence. One in Downtown adorns the west side of the O Casual Dining Restaurant facing 11th street across from Leahy Mall that reflects back a sort of Omaha collage in panorama.
Finally, if you drive down 13th Street north out of downtown you can watch the progress of the 22,000 square foot outdoor mural, Fertile Ground, on the east wall of the Energy Systems plant between Cass and Webster Streets. Meg Saligman, widely regarded as one of the most influential muralists in the nation, was commissioned by the Kiewit Foundation and Bemis Center to create a design specific to Omaha, past and present.
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O Casual Dining West Wall
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These are the sorts of projects we need to support and encourage. Let’s leave our building facades alone and cover our blank walls with public art, not public product placement.
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A section of Meg Saligman’s Fertile Ground
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