First came the awkward placement of the HP TouchPad into the season premiere of The CW’s Gossip Girl.  Leaving aside the oddity of these characters using the TouchPad rather than the iPad, the promotion garnered attention because HP decided to get out of the PC business (including killing the very technology used by Serena) several weeks before the GG premiere.

As Advertising Age reports, this is the problem of the production schedule–placement deals are worked out months in advance, and sometimes by the time they air they’re already out of date.  The Ad Age piece cites Modern Family‘s spring 2010 integration of Toyota, a promotional effort that came to fruition at precisely the same time as Toyota’s massive recall PR nightmare.  In the case of both HP and Toyota, these promotions were developed into the storyline and filmed up to nine months in advance of their airing, making any changes in the final months an impossibility.

On the heels of the Gossip Girl awkwardness came the two most recent episodes of NBC’s The Sing-Off.  For the past two weeks, contestants competed with their interpretations of a current chart-topper and a 1960s hit.  The latter was being used as a cross-promotional opportunity for the network’s The Playboy Club, which aired in the 10 p.m. Eastern slot directly following the a cappella competition.  The end of the first episode featured host Nick Lachey exhorting, “If you enjoyed our ’60s songs, be sure to stick around for more of the decade and watch The Playboy Club, coming up next!”

When news of The Playboy Club’s demise came the following day, the promotion seemed like an awkward but charming moment, but this week’s episode of The Sing-Off–filmed over a week prior, mind you–was almost uncomfortable.  As the ’60s performances commenced, Lachey addressed his costume change by noting that the slick suit he was wearing had come from The Playboy Club‘s costume department.  As I fought the giggles (thinking that the costume department was probably happy to get rid of it as they cleaned house), it got even more awkward–at the moment Lachey finished this comment, a graphic appeared on the bottom of the screen, informing viewers that up next was Prime Suspect.

These two virtually concurrent instances of awkwardly out-of-date product integrations reveal two key truths about the nature of television advertising.  First, that the television production schedule requires a great deal of pre-planning on the part of advertisers, studio executives, and writers.  Second, that as product placement and cross-promotion become the norm due to ad-skipping with DVRs, DVDs, and online streaming, we’re not only going to see more integrations, but more moments when those placements just don’t work by the time they hit the air.

In the meantime, let’s get Serena and Blair some iPads, and hope next week’s episode of The Sing-Off doesn’t feature a cappella versions of songs about workplace romance.

I like vampires as much as any other slightly romantically inclined middle aged female. I’m definitely more a Whedon than Meyers girl, but I certainly understand the appeal the latter has to my kid’s female classmates and their moms. So I tried The Vampire Diaries for its sexy vampires but I stayed for its smart plotting and believable characters. As Annie Petersen describes in her “Vampire Diaries: The Best Genre Television You’re not Watching“, its appeal is not in spite but because of its generic qualities. Moreover, it is a genre show that embraces narrative complexity and revels in its quick pace, introducing and killing off characters ceaselessly, yet giving most of them enough of an identity to make us care.

There are two characteristics Annie doesn’t address that stand out to me: the depiction of women and the way problems aren’t artificially caused or perpetuated. All too many shows these days may feature strong female characters, but they often do little more than talk about or for the men. The Vampire Diaries has a set of surprisingly complex and even more astoundingly likeable characters who consistently are depicted as real friends. They fight and disagree; they forgive and make up. As thelana describes in her excellent post on Female Friendly Shows: This is the show that had an entire episode just dedicated to the three main female characters sitting down together, catching each other up, apologizing to each other and then having a seance together. Most importantly, they actually talk to one another about their lives and worries and do not constantly keep things hidden from one another.

Which brings me to my other point, namely, the way misunderstandings or plain ignorance often get used as plot points. While foreshadowing may be a useful device and narrative irony certainly has its place, I often grow frustrated with shows when the entire plot depends on a misunderstanding or a refusal to be open and honest, when there is no storyline except for people acting less aware and smart than we know them to be and than we expect adults (or even near adults) to behave. Admittedly, there are certainly instances of that here: if you know there are evil bloodsucking vampires around town, it’d behoove you to warn your family not to invite strangers into the house.

And yet, the show doesn’t rely on using character ignorance to create drama, allowing me to watch without rolling my eyes or yelling at the screen. When Elena’s young, pretty aunt gets hit on by what we know is an evil hungry vamp, she not only doesn’t fall for it but also has been protected by her niece with the necessary herb. When Elena does not get invited into a home she accurately deducts that this person might indeed know about vampires. When the viewer starts to suspect that Elena’s birth mother might be random history teacher and vampire hunter’s dead wife, the characters figure it out as well and, as a bonus, actually share that information.

Also, unlike more episodic genre shows that are built around the secrecy that often comes with otherness, such as Buffy or Smallville, The Vampire Diaries refuses to return to the status quo of general ignorance. Instead, when Elena’s brother is confronted with weird behavior and strange faces and drained bodies, he actually Googles vampires and confronts his quasi girl friend. Or rather, and I’ll end with this more unsettling example of intrusive product placement, he Bings it. So where the show itself manages to make me belief in these characters because they act and think like real people, it is that commercial intrusion which, as Rebecca Tushnet argues, destroy[s] suspension of disbelief more than the presence of vampire diaries.

But this post isn’t about the film, per se. Rather, it’s about the film’s egregious use of product placement…or rather, the sense of product placement within the film. This post was imagined to note and then analyze the presence of four key brands within the film (Pizza Hut, Budweiser, Coke & Pepsi) as quid-pro-quo product placement of the “We’ll use your brand, you give us money” variety. So let’s start with that.

One key product placement-esque moment within the film comes when Gervais’ character, Mark Bellison, composes and then delivers what are essentially the 10 Commandments as envisioned by a person who just learned he’s the only person on Earth who can lie (or even knows what a lie is). Wanting to have something more weighty than just pieces of paper to read from, Bellison ends up pasting his Commandments to…Pizza Hut boxes. Throughout the ensuing scene, the Pizza Hut logo is featured prominently as Bellison delivers his pronouncements from the steps of his apartment building. Classic product placement, right? Turns out that’s not exactly what happened in the case of The Invention of Lying.

After Googling for some support for my analysis, I discovered this piece from Cinema Blend. At the end of the printed interview, Cinema Blend’s Katie Rich asks the film’s screenwriter & co-director Matthew Robinson about the film’s product placement. Robinson’s response: “I think it’s so funny when people say, oh God, there’s so much product placement in the film. We didn’t get a penny.” As it happens, despite the prime real estate afforded to popular brands, no money changed hands.

Perhaps the fact that these products were featured in the film without having paid for the privilege makes it more interesting than simple product placement. Robinson notes in the Cinema Blend interview that, when writing the script, he wanted to lend some authenticity to the world the characters inhabit. Using Pizza Hut and Budweiser, Coke and Pepsi, just made sense. Later, when they tried to get paid for these promotional opportunities, no one would bite–but they left them in. (They’re allowed to do that, because it’s essentially satire, which is protected.) Ultimately, within the context of our current media environment, audiences are left assuming that the presence of these familiar brands within the film is the result of product placement. In fact–do a Google search for “Invention of Lying Pizza Hut” and you get scores of articles referencing the film’s egregious use of product placement (and, incidentally, that Cinema Blend article).

The question remains, though: is that assumption for good or for ill? And for whom?