Have You Ever Noticed This?

In our class, we have talked about a wide variety of advertising, as well as how tricky advertisements can be. We all know about product placement in movies and advertisements over multiple media outlets, such as television, radio, newspapers, and websites, so what else could there possibly be? It sounds like we may have covered every type of advertisement. That statement could not be more wrong.

There are still a lot of hidden forms of advertisement that we have yet to uncover. For example, have you ever noticed product placement in video games? I, personally may have noticed a Pepsi billboard or something like that in GTA, but I never thought much of it until I stumbled upon this subject on the Internet. It turns out that product placement is everywhere in video games, and it is becoming much more popular because the advertising industry is evolving. The evolution of advertising is also something we talked about in class, but it is very interesting to see a real life example of this in current events. So why is product placement in video games becoming so huge? It is mostly because commercials on television are being outdated due to TiVo and other things that allow people to skip commercials, and also because video games are becoming increasingly popular amongst males between the ages of 18 -35, a demographic that advertisers love. It seems as if no matter what happens, we will always be surrounded by advertisements.

Here are some examples of product placement in video games:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Is the media to blame?

Today in my economics class, another student claimed that the media is partly responsible for the current economic crisis. On first hearing this, I was confused. I am not the most economic-savvy student, but I was pretty sure that the media can not be held responsible for the stock market crash. He explained that although there would have been a crisis no matter what, the media pressured us to sell our stocks, and that the media made the problem seem worse than it actually was. After listening to this, I realized that the media is to blame. The media always seems to make situations worse. We do of course need media to inform us of what is happening, but it seems as though simple reporting has somehow changed to adviceful reporting- some of which is not the best advice. I hate it when the news makes you worry about something non-threatening. For example, how many times do you hear a phrase like, “Can eating chicken kill you? find out more at 11″. Then, because we as americans are overly precaucious,  we will stay tuned and find out that yes, eating a lot of chicken that is undercooked or whatever can kill you. WELL DUH!!!! I hate when the news, and other forms of media play their sick games to try to get us to listen to them more.