Product Placement Goes to New Heights (Lows?)

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Product Placement Goes to New Heights (Lows?) Listen to this article

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The world looked on when all 33 Chilean miners were brought to the surface safely there was much to celebrate. The world looked on and, for once, it was all good news. How often does THAT happen???

Then I was checking my Twitter feed and I saw this Tweet from Travis…

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It made me laugh.

Then this morning I read on 9to5 Mac (image from there also) that Steve Jobs gave each of the miners an iPod. This was a nice gesture, but I think they would have been even more appreciated during the miners’ 68 days under ground. “So what did you do for 68 days stuck there?” “I won Plants vs Zombies three times, I am going through Angry Birds for the second time, and my Farmville Farm is doing great!”

Putting 2 and 2 together (Oakley Glasses and iPods) I got to wondering. Product placement is commonplace on TV and in movies; case in point, on this week’s How I Met Your Mother the product placement was just about the most egregious I have seen. Are disasters the new venue for this sort of promotion?

UPDATE: Larry just gave me an FYI that… The miners were specifically not given items like Mp3 players, PSPs etc. because the doctors felt that items like them are to exclusionary and may cause the miners to start to become to solitary, drifting away from each other (with their headphones plugged in etc.)  They wanted to make sure they stayed together as a team/group.

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About the Author

Dan Cohen
Having a father who was heavily involved in early laser and fiber-optical research, Dan grew up surrounded by technology and gadgets. Dan’s father brought home one of the very first video games when he was young and Dan remembers seeing a “pre-release” touchtone phone. (When he asked his father what the “#” and “*” buttons were his dad said, “Some day, far in the future, we’ll have some use for them.”) Technology seemed to be in Dan’s blood but at some point he took a different path and ended up in the clergy. His passion for technology and gadgets never left him. Dan is married to Raina Goldberg who is also an avid user of Apple products. They live in New Jersey with their golden doodle Nava.