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Wayne's World

One of the earliest and most iconic examples of satirical product placement can be found in this scene from the movie version of Wayne’s World. The scene opens up with Rob Lowe’s character Benjamin explaining the concept of product placement. In just one minute and ten seconds of screen-time, Wayne’s World is able to utilize five counts of product placement to criticize the idea, calling it “really sad,” but getting fat paychecks from five corporations nonetheless. The scene even parodies a campaign of one of the sponsors, cutting to black and white and quoting pain reliever Nuprin’s slogan, “Little. Yellow. Different.” Just like the examples from 30 Rock and Community, Wayne’s World pokes fun at the idea of product placement and criticizes the use of this form of embedded marketing by incorporating it ironically into the film’s dialogue.
Although product placement is usually pushed to the background for a more subtle, subconscious approach to marketing, these three case studies bring the concept front and center, satirizing its use and noting it as a necessary evil for media networks. Interestingly enough, all these examples come from NBC media, very clearly showing the network’s rather negative opinion of the concept of product placement.
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