1) The young man leaned back, the lines of his Armani suite crisp and sharp against the faded couch.
2) Becky flipped the lid off of the tube with an impatient ‘snap’, before smearing Burt’s Bees Lip-gloss in Sheer Shimmer all over her bruised lips.
3) “Nothing a Band-Aid won’t fix,” Jenna murmured as she knelt down next to her crying son, smoothing back his hair even as she examined his leg.
See the three above sentences? Can you tell me what about the three is the same, and what is different? Let me give you a hint; they all use product-placement of some kind, but two of them use it effectively, while the third does not. Can you guess which are which?
Sentence 3 uses a product, Band-Aid, which has become so well know in pop-culture as to have achieved brand association, a state whereby the brand in question has become so associated with the product in general that its name can be substituted for the products without any confusion by the general public. Another example would be to say ‘Kleenex’ rather than ‘tissue’.
Sentence 1 uses a brand that, while not having achieved brand association, has still entered the popular vernacular to the point where it is accepted as being associated with particular qualities. To delve a bit into semiotics, this is a case where the signifier (an Armani suite) has achieved such cultural recognition as to have a distinct and generally accepted signified—both what is being indicated by wearing the suit (class, wealth, etc.) as well as the fact that that is what the wearer wants to project. Thus, placing a character in an Armani suite (or having them carry a Gucci hand bag, or have jeans bought at Wal-Mart), while still arguably a form of brand-placement, is a form that transmits meaning about a character.
Sentence 2, however, is using a brand that is obscure enough as to have no widely accepted cultural meaning, and so it totally useless as a way of transmitting meaning about a character. You see, for a brand to achieve status as a cultural signifier it has to have a level of acceptance and has to be well known in that society. Burt’s Bees is neither generally well known, nor accepted to have any meaning. Furthermore, notice another difference between the brand-item in sentence 2 and those in sentences 1 and 3? The name of the item in 2 is long. Which is bad. If I, as a reader, have to endure brand placement I want it to be brief. Drawing it out like that is only annoying. It would have been simpler to say that she “ghosted sheer lip-gloss over her bruised lips.” You would get the same meaning—that she wanted her lips to be highlighted without covering the bruises on them—without the brand name. Furthermore, both Armani and Band-Aid have a level of longevity that Burt’s Bees does not (at least yet) have.
Of course, it is best for all if you simply don’t have to use brands at all…. XD
Cheerio!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I disagree with you. I think it is inaccurate when you say 'brand placement' because the intention, of people in our class anyway, is not to promote products and make money but to be realistic. I think naming specific products can be very beneficial when constructing a scene—and no one in class is doing it gratuitously. I felt a stronger connection to your piece when you said ‘Burt’s Bees’ because I have used that lip balm before and I know that it is yellow and made from natural products and I also happen to have an affinity for it. All this information is transmitted in ‘Burt’s Bees’. Sure not everyone with know it but how often in the course of a day do you run into something you do not know or understand? Product naming comes off as more realistic and can forge stronger connections—it is not placement or gratuitous. Also, I do it a lot.
"Burt's Bees in Sheer Shimmer" is a very specific product--not just the Burt's Bees brand, but also the specific product name down to the color. While it's true that by itself this might seem weird or gratuitous, it's also possible to use this kind of product specificity well--to flesh out a character who is obsessed with consumer products and brand names. As with many other writerly tics, using something like this *once* in a story would probably look accidental and awkward, but doing this ten or twenty times would build up a little joke or character tic and let readers know something about where a speaker's or character's attention is.
Post a Comment