I watched the show New Girl in search of product placement on sitcoms. I have watched the show before, so I felt like this was a good place to start. FIrst I watched the pilot, where a heartbroken girl, Jess, finds out her boyfriend has been cheating and moves out into an apartment full of men who clearly do not know how to live with women. Their exchanges are very awkward and it seems that they regret their decision to let her move in. In an attempt at normalcy, they take Jess out to find herself a rebound, which they try to coach her through. After a flop or two, she meets one and seems really happy, especially to be going out on a date with him the following night. Long story short, the guy she was supposed to meet stands her up and her three roommates in and save the night and save her from wallowing in public.
When I watched this episode, I searched for product placement, I watched carefully so as to see what brands were showcased and what stood out. In the opening of the show, when Jess meets the men, one of them is wearing a New Balance shirt with the logo (almost the same color as his shirt) barely visible, especially if you are not paying attention to that very closely. I kept watching, not seeing any logos at all, until I had a glimmer of hope about halfway through the show, a laptop with what I thought was the apple logo on it. Upon further review, the apple logo was covered with a different circular emblem, and an iPad that was used in a scene that followed almost directly also did not display the logo. As I continued watching the show, I took note of the fact that when they were out, beer bottles always faced the opposite way so that labels were not visible, and if they were not turned around, they were blurred and out of focus. All in all I determined that none of these were product placement, but I thought that maybe this had to do with the fact that the episode was the pilot episode of the series. Pilots can be very different from the rest of the series, different sets, different actors, etc. I decided that for this reason, I would watch a later episode in the series.
In this episode, Jess and her roommates face even more trials and tribulations, all as awkward and funny as the Pilot was. Jess is determined to gather the rest of her belongings from her ex’s house, but the guys determine that her ex is her own personal Kryptonite. All in all, at the end of the episode, Jess gets her belongings back and everyone is happy.
As far as product placement goes, during this episode, the only brand I saw that were recognizable to me were on her bathroom counter. I spotted a Scope bottle and a bottle of Aussie hair mousse, however, even though I recognized them, they were still blurry and hard to make out. Nothing was particularly easy to pick out. One of the guys used a cell phone that I identified as motorola, but no logo yet again. Even Jess’s car in the numerous times it was shown in the episode was absolutely logo-less. Finally, at the end of the show, I recognized a bag that she carried out of her ex’s as Vera Bradley.
All in all, I was surprised that none of these things were showcased more to the viewers. I did not count any of these things as product placement, because none of them were blatant or repeated. Things were shown once, or not explicitly shown at all, and that to me, felt as though the viewer was not meant to see the brand. I was expecting to see a lot more product placement throughout the episodes I watched, but when I thought back to all the other sitcoms I have watched before, I honestly could not remember ever really seeing a lot of product placement during them, unless you count the Girl Scout Cookie episode of Friends.
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