Product Placement – Is it Shameless or Just Good Business?

Product Placement – Is it Shameless or Just Good Business?

I teach a lot of marketing classes where we talk about product placement.  In a recent discussion we were talking about FedEx and the movie Castaway.  I read that the company didn’t pay for that mention.  I find that hard to believe but I guess it is possible.

Product placement is big business.  Recently BeBe launched a new line of clothes based on its popularity from 90210.

Here is a list of some very noticeable products placed in movies that you may remember.

  1. Taco Bell in Demolition Man
  2. Popeye’s Chicken in Little Nicky
  3. Reese’s Pieces in ET
  4. New Beetle in Herbie:  Fully Loaded
  5. AOL in You’ve Got Mail
  6. Several Dolls like Barbie, Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story
  7. Aquafina in National Treasure
  8. CNN in Contact
  9. Dr. Pepper in Spiderman
  10. Apple computers in too many movies to mention

Check out the following links for some more examples:

Movie-Moron.com – 10 Most Shameless Uses of Product Placement in Films

MetaFilter.com – Examples of Product Placement in Movies

Cracked.com – 10 Most Shameless Product Placements in Movie History

Listverse.com – Top 10 Blatant Examples of Product Placement in Movies

Wikipedia.com – The Complete Lowdown on Product Placement

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How to Market You or Your Product Using Social Media

Today’s Ask Dr. Diane: I just wrote a book that is available through Amazon.  I’m just not sure about the best way to market it?  Any suggestions?
 
That is a good question.  The tips I’m about to give can also be used to market things other than a book. 
 
You could market it through several ways.  I would create a link to it on your site like I have links on my main website to Amazon.  If you don’t want to do that, you could offer it directly from you as a PDF through your site and charge them using PayPal. 
 
You might want to make a video (3-4 minutes at most) and put it on Youtube.  At the end of the video make mention of a free offer or newsletter and where to go for more information.  If they go to that site, it should be a capture page to get people signed up  to receive free newsletters (through a site like aweber.com) to get them interested in you and your book. 
 
You definitely need to be on Facebook and create fan pages like the ones I have for each of my books there.  See:
 
 
I would be on Twitter as well.  You can tie all of your Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, etc. accounts into one area on sites like Hootsuite . . . but I like to use Posterous a lot. It is like a blog but it has a great share information toolbar that you can get that and it also allows you to share your updates on multiple sites like Hootsuite does. 
 
If you want to learn about social networking and “how to do it” . . .for a reasonable price you can go to  Letsgetsocial and sign up to get their videos.  I watched them and they are really very informative.  They are designed to teach people how to be media managers but people who don’t want to do the job of media management can learn how to do their own media management from them. 
 
I gave a presentation yesterday to a local group here where others were presenting to career-seekers … they all agreed that Youtube is one of the biggest things you can do to get noticed. 
 
I watched a video a while back on Pitchengine.com about videos and they had some good information.  They are more costly though. You might watch their video for information.  If you are going to spend that kind of money, you need to have a major product to promote.  Books probably won’t have the return to support that. 
 
Talks are another great way to promote your book . . . so are radio interviews.   You can go to radioguestlist.com or other sites like that to find people looking to interview you.
 
Blogging is one of the best ways to get your name out there.   I like to use WordPress because it is free and uncomplicated. 
 
You can also release press releases on prweb or other such sites.  I am on wooeb who also has press releases that are not as expensive.  You can send out free releases on pitchengine.
 
You might check out some books . . . .I liked a book called Career Renegade . . . had some good ideas.  (on a different side topic . . .I liked the book The Happiness Advantage written by ex Harvard professor – very entertaining)
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How to Get a Job Showcasing Your Abilities Using Camtasia, Powerpoint and Youtube

In my presentation yesterday at the CareerConnectors.Net workshop, I presented several different examples of how to market “you” as the product in order to get a job. If you are interested in learning how to use Camtasia with Powerpoint to promote your abilities and showcase them on Youtube, check out the following video based on information in my book, How to Reinvent Your Career:  Make Money Doing What You Love.  I am definitely going to be looking for a new video recorder though as this one crunched the screen, making it and me more compressed and wide.  If anyone has a good recommendation for a video recorder, I’d like to hear about it. . .

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8N71TeTd8&fs=1&hl=en_US]
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How to Get Free e-Books

Are you considering buying an e-reader but don’t have the money to pay for a lot of e-books?  You might consider going to the library.  Libraries are offering more and more electronic titles.  Keep in mind that certain libraries may not have the ability to download files into specific readers.  I am in Arizona, and the local library here cannot download files for the Kindle or the iPad.  They do offer titles for other readers such as Nook, Sony Reader, and Libre.  Even if your local library doesn’t support certain readers, you can still find sites on the Internet that do.

How do you get the titles onto your reader?   You will first need to download the Adobe Digital Editions software.  You can obtain this by Downloading the Adobe Products Digital Editions Software.    One that is downloaded you can then connect your e-reader through a USB connection to your computer and transfer the book to your e-reader.  Adobe’s site also allows you to download free sample e-books.

If you are looking for more free e-books, check out:

Free-ebooks.net  

Guttenberg.org has over 33,000 books that you can read on your computer or many other devices including iPad, Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, iPhone, iTouch, Android and more.

Barnes and Noble offers a free trial membership   

For a more complete list, read the following article: 20 Best Websites to Download Free Books

Suggested reading about e-books/e-readers:

Using e-calibre for Your e-Books Conversion Needs

What Kind of e-Reader are You?

Top 15 Articles to Help with Confusion about How to Choose an e-Reader and Application

e-Texbooks and iPad

e-Books vs. Traditional Books

Colleges to Offer More e-Books

5 Ways that e-Books are Better than Paper Books

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YouTube Uploads 35 Hours Of Video Every Minute — InformationWeek

 

image via textually.org

You may already know that Youtube is extremely popular, but a recent article from informationweek.com really spelled out the numbers.  Think about this . . . according to that article:

In March, users uploaded more than 24 hours of video per minute, Hunter Walk, director of product management at the video social networking site, said in a blog. Within only eight months, traffic has increased by almost 69%.

“That breaks out to 2,100 hours uploaded every 60 minutes, or 50,400 hours uploaded to YouTube every day,” Walk said. “If we were to measure that in movie terms (assuming the average Hollywood film is around 120 minutes long), 35 hours a minute is the equivalent of over 176,000 full-length Hollywood releases every week. Another way to think about it is: If three of the major US networks were broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the last 60 years, they still wouldn�t have broadcast as much content as is uploaded to YouTube every 30 days.”

to read the rest of the article, click here:  informationweek.com