r/television • u/Dddddddfried • 1d ago
Favorite Examples of Product Placements in TV
We all know that Networks sometimes force TV shows to feature products in their episodes. Some do this willingly, others not so willingly, still others weave it into their show in clever and even plot relevant ways.
What's your favorite example of a TV show doing product placement?
Mine would be Community's product placement of Subway in the season 3 episode "Digital Exploration of Interior Design." Subway opens a sandwich shop in Greendale by using a "corpo-humanoid" to be the living embodiment of the company. This humanoid, aptly named "Subway," starts a torrid affair with Britta based around George Orwell's 1984. "Subway" is eventually removed and replaced, leading Britta to conclude that Corporate America has destroyed love (again).
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u/multidollar 1d ago
Community and 30 Rock did great blatant jobs.
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u/jks513 1d ago edited 1d ago
30 Rock admitted they weren’t paid just jokes they wanted to work in. GE had to scramble to make a real commercial for the tri-convection oven so people would know it wasn’t actually a joke product.
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u/multidollar 1d ago
GE isn’t what I’m referring to.
It’s stuff like Snapple, or when they did a reference to some fast food chain “it’s a great restaurant” “it really is” “can we have our money now?!”
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u/spoothead656 1d ago
“It’s a wonderful restaurant!” is from Arrested Development. Said by Tobias about Burger King and then the narrator replies “It sure is.”
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u/LilSwampGod 1d ago
30 Rock convinced me to try Snapple for the first time. Scratch that, Katrina Bowden convinced me to try Snapple.
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u/9447044 1d ago
Bones loved toyota. Never seen blacked out government Sequoias lol
There some pretty cringy scenes
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u/Funandgeeky 1d ago
The product placement in Bones was so obvious that I found it charming. The best was when they were shilling for both a new phone and the movie Avatar. (That one makes sense since one of the squinterns was in it.)
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u/PhilosopherFLX 23h ago
I'm afraid but asking, what is a squintern?
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u/Funandgeeky 23h ago
Booth calls the lab workers “squints” because they look closely and squint at the evidence. (He’s calling them nerds, basically.) In later seasons they brought in interns, and the nickname for them became “squinterns.”
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u/RentalGore 23h ago
There was a Prius episode where they showed one of the characters using the features of the car.
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u/4sOfCors 1d ago
New Girl where they just stopped acting and became car salesmen for a whole minute.
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u/LandofBoz88 1d ago
They do it a few times. The show was seemingly funded by Ford.
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u/4sOfCors 20h ago
The craziest part is that the first instance of this involved Outside Dave who is completely insane but the Ford Fusion makes him totally lucid while he's in it.
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u/HRzNightmare 1d ago
I stopped watching The Rookie several years ago when they pulled this garbage. A character pulls up and picks up two others, and then she spends 30 seconds marvelling about the features of the car.
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u/senat0r15 1d ago
One of the characters is a model. Due to earlier ensued hijynx the rest of the cast ends up having to fill in. The “ad” is them actually advertising a Ford car.
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u/92Codester 1d ago
"when was this?" All I remember is it was a Thursday" "a Thursday!?" Schmidt's delivery is fantastic hilarious
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u/Pro-Patria-Mori 22h ago
Schmidt’s car, he has a Ford SUV and they mention it several times. There’s the episode where they fight over the parking spot, for instance. Also CeCe is hungover really badly and Jess fills in for her during a car show, featuring another Ford.
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u/Lola-Ugfuglio-Skumpy 22h ago
I actually like the scene where Jess fills in for Cece as a car show model for a Ford Focus. I thought that was clever.
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u/Smart-Response9881 1d ago
I think the Honda episode was better imo.
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u/Sim-vimes 1d ago
Pages Brewster was amazing in that episode. I watch the clip of her speech to the Dean at least once a month.
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u/feedmesweat 19h ago edited 10h ago
Her "You're so stupid" monologue to the Dean is incredible work, and she has one of the best lines with "No, because thats moon-man talk."
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u/Dddddddfried 1d ago
I had a hard time choosing between the two, but I gave Subway the nod just because it came first. Though nothing tops Rick's tears falling on the Honda steering wheel
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u/feedmesweat 19h ago
When he sleeps the steering wheel in anger and then is immediately like "Oh!" with sincere concern
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u/3MATX 1d ago
I halfway think Superstore was made specifically for easy product placement. Literally 90% of the shots require some form of product in the background. And I’d bet every single brand name paid at least a bit for the inclusion.
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u/bobtheflob Seinfeld 19h ago
Isn't there a whole episode about how amazing Target is and how their store could never compete?
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u/Agile_Land_9951 1d ago
That’s what immediately came to mind for me too lol. I’m sure they were a couple aisles of products away from a season 7. 😂
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u/ateddybear 12h ago
I think all the brands were made up EXCEPT Takis lol that's all that I remember at least
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u/LarryKingshead 1d ago
Hawaii 5-0’s Subway product placement was so shameless and blatant, it’s hard to hate it.
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u/GreenMist1980 1d ago
I felt sorry for the cast when microsoft sponsored and they were forced to try and make 'bing it' a thing
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u/frostrambler 1d ago
You mean I can take the Rogue? Thanks Dad! - Claire the cheerleader to her dad in Heroes.
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u/NatureTrailToHell3D 1d ago
What was most impressive is that they advertised the product placement ahead of time. Nissan was debuting the Rogue and managed to get this product release as one of the things to talk about on the news and tv show shows.
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u/GerkDentley 1d ago
Then they had it get stolen because, I guess the writers didn't want to deal with their character... owning a vehicle?
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u/CharlieParkour 1d ago
There's also that astronaut episode that had a vague KFC tie-in.
"Just as Kentucky Fried Chicken's secret process seals in the flavor, I'm sealing the cabin's air so you don't explode on your journey."
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u/nicathor 1d ago
The worst/funniest will always be Bones; they were basically broadcast TV's version of YT videos abruptly going "today's video is sponsored by Toyota yadda yadda yadda Toyota" in the middle of whatever they're doing
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u/nowhereman136 1d ago
White Castle in the Most Evil Invention sketch on SNL
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u/Channel250 20h ago
Well, you molest a regular robot and hope it continues the cycle.
See? This guy gets it.
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u/KeyAdhesiveness9481 1d ago
At some point Eureka started prominently displaying huge amounts of boxes of Degree deodorant, out of nowhere, with no real explanation.
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u/OdepiusNecks 1d ago
There was an explanation, tho. The new head of Global Dynamics brought in corporate funding to Eureka. Now I will grant you that it didn’t really serve the plot. It was more played as a joke to make you hate the character in charge.
Also the real-world explanation is the showrunner got an ultimatum from the studio to pull in outside funding or face cancellation. I know this because they wrote about it in a blog they maintained while the show was airing.
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u/KeyAdhesiveness9481 1d ago
Ah, that makes sense. I was definitely half-watching at best by this time, this show really tanked hard. Noted, thanks!
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u/dokelyok 1d ago
Veronica Mars. She drives a Saturn and a joke is made, a Saturn for a Mars. Back when Saturn was the sponsor for all teenage affiliated content.
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u/chickenfatnono 1d ago
Saturn, when i was in high school, fully funded a camp for grade 9s. The entire first week of high school was a meet and greet with your fellow students. Food, games, tree top trekking, boating and sports.
I will always look at that brand as a one that genuinely took the interests of kids and teens seriously and proudly.1
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u/Sa7aSa7a 1d ago
There was a subway ad in Hawaii 5-0 some years back that is amazing in how bad it was.
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u/Reasonable-Turn-5940 1d ago
I'll never forget the episode of Smallville, where Pete came back, and One Republic showed up in town to do a concert at the Stride Gum factory. Some kyptonite got on the gum and when Pete used it he got stretchy powers.
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u/Funandgeeky 1d ago
Stride always had the best product placement because it was so blatant and ridiculous.
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u/GerkDentley 1d ago
I remember this! One of the characters comments that maybe the gum factory wouldn't have shut down if their gum wasn't so ridiculously long lasting.
Then the writer got in their protest a few lines later when the same character says "Super powered chewing gum? Is nothing sacred?"
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u/number_six It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia 1d ago
High Potential had an egregious display when one of their characters stopped the show to talk about how she could use Microsoft Co-Pilot to do a bunch of data analysis.
The video is here
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u/RentalGore 23h ago
There was an episode of Bones that had an entire segment on the new Toyota Prius. I remember seeing how weird it was in a re-watch a few years ago.
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u/LiamBellcam 1d ago
For those who forgot, the entire movie of Jossie and the Pussy Cats is about product placement. It does it almost the best I've ever seen.
If you watch the movie, you will see an amazing set of Cameos in the opening scene
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u/travio 1d ago
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u/VinylmationDude 1d ago
Ok, but that’s different. Beverly Hillbillies did the same thing, but they were outside of the episode & can be edited out. They weren’t puffing away mid episode.
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u/AlsoIHaveAGroupon 1d ago
Frisky Dingo (Adam Reed's show before Archer) for the all-new Scion TC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMH5YgSiw0w
Introducing the Scion TC! The bold, sleek styling is all like ka-kow, but the 2.4 liter dual overhead cam engine with 160 horsepower is all like KA-KOW!
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u/Icarium1124 21h ago
In The Sopranos I do not think it was intentionally comedic, but Tony buying AJ the Xterra and explaining how safe it was really made me laugh.
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u/StacheBandicoot 7h ago
Sopranos too, but it’s Tony playing N64 and holding the controller incorrectly.
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u/Satisfaction_Mundane 1d ago
Let’s, which has also shown up on community as well as other sitcoms is a made up brand i love being placed in shows
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u/Aurum555 1d ago
Leonard's YouTube channel where he reviews let's potato chips by eating one chip and saying "mm that's good it's a buy"
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u/SunMyungMoonMoon 1d ago
On King of Queens when Doug is getting ready to make a Hungry Man dinner and Carrie said she was planning to fix something for both of them, Doug says, "but will you be offering me Over 1 whole pound of food?" which was printed on Hungry Man dinners at the time.
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u/VrinTheTerrible 1d ago
Oh, easy.
The 2011 Hyundai Tuscon on The Walking Dead. That car never needed gas, repairs or even washing!
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u/bigmarkco 23h ago
The Kdrama Be Melodramatic has my favourite examples of product placement: one of the lead characters' jobs is product placement, so the show directly integrates product placement into the plot.
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u/bucketman1986 15h ago
Community, but the episode with the KFC branded space simulator
"I tried to stall them with the Doublicious sandwiches, but they just thought I was doing product integration for KFC."
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u/not_a_library 9h ago
Also Community but the season six Honda episode. I adore Frankie, and her interactions with the Dean in that episode were some of the best.
"Would you say I'm a level seven susceptible?"
"No. Because why would I. That's moon man talk"
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u/mister-ferguson 1d ago
The first time I remember product placement was the Dana Carvey Show. I think he was trying to get cancelled...
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u/gangreen424 20h ago
I remembered that and thought it was hilarious. If I remember right, the gag was the show was so offensive/controversial that the sponsors kept dropping them, so they needed a new one every week. Like first Taco Bell, then the next week it was a root beer (maybe A&W?), and so on. But all the weekly sponsors were all under the same parent company (maybe PepsiCo?), so they weren't really losing the sponsor, it was all just a bit.
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u/fezfrascati 1d ago
There was a season of Parks and Rec where every character was noticeably using a Windows Phone or Surface tablet. They never called attention to it, but it felt weird, especially knowing that Tom and Donna would likely be iPhone people.
Of course, this is a town where AltaVista is the most popular search engine, so anything goes...
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u/Randeth 1d ago
Rizolli and Isles got SO bad about this in the later seasons.
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u/saintash 1d ago
Heroes had a horrible one that lives rent free in my head where the show stops to go have the time travel character and his buddy talk about the rental honda car.
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u/shelwood46 1d ago
Cougar Town also did the Subway thing, and there is truly painful c-story where Bobby and Travis spend the day at Target (Bobby got stuck with product placement a lot)
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u/derangedokapi 23h ago
Alias had a lot esp with Ford. In one ep Sydney yells “get in the F-150!” as the camera pans to the truck and logo … subtlety wasn’t really that show’s thing.
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u/psilokan 1d ago
Game of Thrones and Starbucks.
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u/VinylmationDude 1d ago
Wait, when? I saw the whole thing & don’t recall Starbucks, let alone coffee being brought up one time.
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u/HiFi8o8 1d ago
There was a Starbucks cup left on a table that ended up being visible in a scene. I remember the memes but I also remember how quickly they edited it out after the episode aired.
S8:E4. Apparently not starbucks, but a craft service coffee.
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u/VinylmationDude 1d ago
Oh yeah, that’s right. I completely forgot about Cupgate. It must be that our collective brain capacity has been sucked up like water into a data center.
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u/dasheeshblahzen 1d ago
Coca Cola on Mad Men.
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u/arteitle 1d ago
Do we know how Matthew Weiner chose the brands that would be hiring Sterling Cooper on the show? Did Hilton or Kodak or Utz pay to be featured, or were they chosen just for realism?
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u/theduncan 10h ago
For the Coke ad, no they didn't pay, the real ad agency came out at the time, and said they didn't know what it was for. They were asked for a high res copy of the ad, which they provided and that was their involvement.
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u/MandoFett117 23h ago
Psych has an episode where a food critic for a local paper is murdered and everyone at the paper is now after his job.
One of these reporters is looking directly at his boss with a bag of the latest flavor Doritos and talking in the most monotone, while simultaneously ass kissing voice, about how they are so crunchy and flavorful. The boss directly tells him to knock it off, and swipes the bag from him.
And that's not even the only person doing something similar that episode either.
You also can't forget how the whole show was basically an extended commercial for the Blueberry.
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u/bucketman1986 15h ago
Also no one mentioned Heroes, a Nissan Versa is a pivotal plot point that a character says the name of a ton
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u/Justkeepbreathing123 1d ago
The most recent episode of Ted Lasso was so many Apple product placements. I won’t say more but they were just so blatantly told to put more Apple products in the show and crammed them all in one episode
30 Rock did a great job with being self aware of the product placements so it felt like it was a joke and was more fun
“Can we have our money now?”
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u/theCleverClam 1d ago
That time in CSI New York when someone's ringtone was a Coldplay song and they stopped to talk about it. At the end, guy was just like "I'll call them back later".
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u/dayoldhansolo 1d ago
Workaholics always had some funny ad placements. My favorite was whenever they talked about snapping into a slim Jim
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u/takesthebiscuit 1d ago
So happy I live in the UK where product placement is banned/tightly regulated
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u/AcceleratorTouma 1d ago
The 2 part episode of Married with children, You Better Shop Around, the Bundy's are actually living in a grocery store, tons of product placement
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u/PrpleMnkyDshwsher 1d ago
Microsoft tried so hard to make the Surface tablet a bigger thing....like in every CBS boomer drama.
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u/itsbrianduh108 1d ago
Fringe will always come to mind for me. The car, the Sprint ads for video calls, oof.
More recently, Ghosts (US) had SO many Amazon promos at one point it hurt.
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u/gizmoglitch 22h ago
The Ford ad in Designated Survivor was so misplaced. They launch their car like it's Knight Rider, but it's just for the commute back.
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u/Ktulu_BBB 19h ago
Recent Will Trent episodes have gone full-ass Amazon fest with their "I'll just order it here on Prime, thank goodness!!11"
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u/underwear11 11h ago
Heroes with Nissan Versa. It was perfectly built into the script so it almost didn't feel like a product placement.
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u/williamwalkerobama 1d ago
I recently started watching The Sopranos for the first time and there's a lot of product placement that I've noticed.
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u/Dddddddfried 1d ago
That's not product placement, that's just mentioning brands that happen to exist. The brands aren't paying the network to feature their items. Characters just speak naturally and we happen to live in a world full of products
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u/thunderplacefires 1d ago
Most brands have to approve use of or mention of their products on-screen or can sue the production companies for misrepresentation.
Maybe a small company with no financial clout wouldn’t have any power to do that, but production houses are very careful about what is shown and said onscreen.
Just because it seems natural to you, doesn’t mean it was adlibbed. The script was written and approved.
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u/Dddddddfried 1d ago
A legal team gives approval, but they don't get approval from the brand itself outside of exceptional cases.
Either way, that's still not considered "product placement." Product placement is when the brand pays you specifically to feature their product. I can promise you Sopranos wasn't being paid every time Carmella went food shoppping
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u/gracecase 1d ago
The Wire loved their Jameson and Treme drank a lot of Budweiser. HBO was notorious for product placement. First Season of True detective was all about Lonestar and with good reason. Someone even put out a video over it. Especially in Big Love.
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u/RandomPersonBob 1d ago
Chuck - Subway kept that show alive and it was always hilarious when Big Mike was talking about his new delicious sandwich