The smoking is notorious, for example. They cram in cigarettes wherever they can, often to the detriment of the scene.
I really wish there were laws mandating a very obvious " this scene was sponsored by X" overlay.
I have to say that it was a bit of an eye-opener- a lot of these ads are not obviously product-placement at all. The one that shocked me the most was an episode of "Friends from College" where the main characters went up the Napa valley for some wine tasting and then stopped into McDonalds on the way back- it was such a sharp, natural and realistic storyline that I would have never assumed that it was product placement. It dealt with "McDonalds-shame" in very sophisticated way that you wouldn't think McDonalds was capable of, and actually made me feel (as somebody who has been wine tasting in Napa and tries to avoid Mickey Ds) that a fast food burger is "allowed".
They may simply know their market well enough to know that people who tend to do McDonald’s take it as a “different kind of food”.
I'd want that too.
I'd love to get my hands on even one list of all product placements in a given show; it would be trivial to make a userscript that overlays such data over a Netflix stream, as an artistic project. I suspect there's a strong point to be driven there.
I don't think an in-vision in-scene notice should be required, as that is very intrusive to the viewer. However, I would support a requirement of full transparency, and I do believe they already notify people of product placement per episode (or am I thinking YouTube? I know I've seen recent notifications somewhere).
Alternately, I would support in-vision in-scene overlays if a subscriber could disable them. I can understand why it would be desirable to be enabled by default, but as an adult viewer who is quite capable of making my own purchasing decisions, I should have the right to consume media without that type of quasi-condescending warning invading my enjoyment of a given piece of media.
Is there anyone who isn’t susceptible to the psychological trickery in advertising?
I woulda once said something similar, but looking back as the years pass, I can see that was a delusion.
If you define influence to be whatever you want, of course you can say you are not influenced by ads.
Both to create awareness that you are being manipulated by this scene, and to discourage product placement in general.
[1] smoking mostly is self inflicted harm, GW kills others
Around my parts the white collar people tend to drive more than working class employees, because they get big houses away from the city where they work, and go to their cabins or whatnot every weekend, and are more likely to buy fuel-wasteful cars like SUVs. While non-white collar people more often go without a car at all or at least use it sparingly. Generally it's not like you couldn't choose a low carbon lifestyle if you worked in arts, blue collar industry, public sector jobs etc.
And about product placement in general: it seems to be a bigger buisness, than I suspected:
https://blog.hollywoodbranded.com/how-much-does-product-plac...