More on LFMB and the Spectre of Advertising...

I ran across a post on Luis Maram's blog on advertising and marketing in Mexico - Luis Maram being a psuedynom for a designer/marketing/publicist professional, who lives in Mexico and reviews and analyzes advertising campaigns. In this post, Luis reports on product placement and advertising within a variety of communication channels: "El Product Placement (también conocido como publicidad indirecta o simplemente placement y cuya traducción literal sería “colocación de productos“) es una técnica donde las empresas exhiben sus productos o servicios en un entorno común, sin hacer mención específica de ellos, simplemente para que el espectador los vea. Este tipo de publicidad se realiza en programas y series de televisión, telenovelas, videos musicales, cine, reality shows y videojuegos, donde ha tenido mucha aceptación" and specifically comments on the use of product placement in "La Fea Más Bella" but notes that there are two distinctly different approaches in how product placement is presented: active ("el personaje hace alusión directa al producto o servicio y destaca caraterísticas o bondades de éste") vs. passive ("aunque el personaje no interactúa con el producto, éste está presente en el entorno y hasta en el contexto"), emphasizing that "Third World" markets tend to take a more active approach - "La primera, por obvias razones resulta más burda, sin embargo, en economías de tercer mundo, puede ser más efectiva." He goes on to state that viewers may be influenced to purchase as they identify the brand with the "personaje" extolling the product, which he remarks is a "fresh, although coarse" way of advertising in the Mexican market, in need of "new ideas".

I was startled when I first witnessed this marketing technique in "La Fea Más Bella"- as I had never witnessed this level of "dialogue as advertising" before, with characters holding up products to each other while repeating the product's commercial slogans. However, it does appear that with the success of "La Fea Más Bella", its use of blatant advertising has declined. While certain talk and variety shows better lend themselves to obvious product placement, it seems that novelas have often used this active product placement to rather off-putting results.

posted by letylafea @ 11:01 AM