Smallville Product Placement Hits New Low
Mark Wilson
About.com
March 16, 2008
So we wait patiently for new episodes of Smallville to
arrive in the strike-inflicted bursts we’ve been getting
so far this year. We settle in for a one on Thursday,
the first new episode in a month. And what do we get? An
hour-long commercial for Stride gum, Smallville’s
obnoxiously visible new uber-sponsor.
Now Smallville is already a little notorious for
intrusive product placement; previous indictments can be
found throughout the blogsphere (here’s an example). But
this was a new low. Even TV Guide called the product
placement in “Hero” “over the top.”
A big chunk of the action in “Hero” takes place at a
Stride gum factory that’s being let out for concerts,
and there are huge Stride logos everwhere, starting with
an enormous logo outside the “factory” (which looks more
like a big dance club in the establishing shots) and
continuing inside where banners with the Stride logo
hang from the rafters for the characters to walk past or
get beaten up in front of.
That’s Level A product placement. Level B is having your
characters use the product and flash the packaging for
the camera, which guest star Sam Jones III, a former
regular returning to the show for the first time in four
years, obligingly does at the end of the episode.
Annoyed yet? Wait for the kicker. Level C is a marketing
doozie worthy of Lex Luthor himself: Stride gum gives
you superpowers! Want proof? Check out Pete Ross,
Jones’s character, who chews a single stick of Stride
gum (which, remember, is a real-world product) and turns
into Elastic Man, immediately becoming a hero by
stretching out his arms and saving Kara’s life from a
totally random falling equipment tower. The origin story
– a batch of the gum contaminated by an equally random
vein of kryptonite (I hate it when that happens) – is
quickly dispensed with off-camera, but the connection
between Stride and Pete’s powers is reinforced by his
continuing to pop sticks of the gum throughout the
episode.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that The CW and
its sponsor wanted young viewers to make the connection
between Stride gum and stretchy superpowers. The
breathtaking chutzpah displayed by the network and the
sponsor in going beyond mere placement and turning an
entire episode into an ad for (wink, wink) supergum is,
I think, kinda reprehensible.
And as if that weren’t enough, the parts of the episode
that weren’t pushing Stride were given over to the pop
group One Republic, which got three performances during
the episode ("Apologize", “Stop and Stare”, and “Mercy
Lyrics"). Even Charmed never got that bad. Don’t mistake
me – I like having contemporary pop and rock music mixed
into youth-oriented dramas; it adds to the atmosphere.
And I have nothing against this particular band. But two
on-camera sets and a third on the soundtrack? That’s
heavy product placement, hijacking the episode to shill
for a corporate sponsor. With that on top of the
brutally aggressive Stride marketing (which also popped
up on ticker-line bugs during the episode), the suits
took what should have been a cool mini-reunion episode
and totally ruined it. I like my ads in ad form, not as
entire episodes of one of my shows.