On Product Placement

Product placement is an efficient marketing tool. It gets a product into a consumers view without forcing them to recognize that it's there. Of course, I'm assuming that it's done right. Most of the time, product placement sticks out like a sore thumb.

My favorite kind of product placement is the kind that makes fun of the fact that there is product placement. This happened in Arrested Development, when Tobias and Carl Weathers eat at Burger King and hail the restaraunt for it's free refills. Another example is last night's Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode, entitled "Boost Mobile." The entire show consisted of Frylock and Meatwad getting annoyed by Master Shake and his Boost Mobile Phone friend reaching to the youth demographic while being hustled by the marketing department. It was quite hilarious.

Why can't advertisement be more like this? I don't mind watching commercials if they are entertaining, and product placement can be done properly. I'm more likely to actually consider a product if I think the company pushing it was clever enough to keep entertaining me instead of interrupting (Boost mobile, excluded).