Product Placement

Appl eis notorioius for it. Imacs are in every movie

I'm negotiating a product placement deal with Ayingerbrau lager whereby certain ILE regulars will mention it on every thread in return for free drink for life. Fingers crossed eh.

That article says that Bulgari payed Weldon simply to "mention" Bulgari at least 12 times? I wonder if they get a say in what context they are "mentioned" in. How about "Sharon, sporting a very realistic looking fake Bulgari she picked up on Canal Street for $10..." or "I like your watch"... "Oh, this piece of shit? Its Bulgari. I wanted a Breitling or Tag Hauer instead". I dunno.

Josieandthepussycatsisthebestmovieever.

Howard Stern is annoying with it, HBO is crazy for it in the Sopranos and Sex In The CIty.

In the movie "Ice Cream Man" everyone wears Converse hi-top sneakers. I couldn't tell if it was product placement or a weird attempt by the costuming department to instill in everyone a cartoonish "all- American" boy scout type spirit.

I'm organizing a campaign of "Nitsuh placement." The first Nitsuh will appear in Training Day, the upcoming Denzel Washington / Ethan Hawke movie (a Nitsuh will appear in a shop window as Denzel walks past), and, coincidentally, I'm also talking with HBO about several placements during the next season of Sex and the City; Miranda will use only Nitsuh from here on out, and an episode may even be scripted in which Miranda convinces all of her friends to try Nitsuh, with hilarious-but-touching consequences.

I think Ms Weldon is getting a lot of unfair stick for this Bulgari thing. She was commissioned by them to write a novel for 750 of their customers, which she called The Bulgari Connection. This is surely standard practice in the arts and hardly the end of the world. Didn't some composer write corporate music for Nissan a year or so back? The fact that she (and her publishers) thought the novel was good enough for a wider audience seems beside the point. As for product placement in novels, I'm sure that has already been done -- wasn't there a story last year about a novelist and a well-known brand of whiskey?