Ugly Betty Blatant 7-Up Placement

First, it started with “90210”, now we have blatant product placement written into the script of “Ugly Betty?” I guess 7-Up is launching a new antioxidant cherry flavour and they are using the show to promote it to their core target market, 18-35 year old women. I get product placement, I even like most of it. I just hate it being shoved down my throat to the point of me yelling at the televison. I mean they had two people on the show bring up the new flavour and talk about it in about sixty seconds. They even posted the print ad on the board of their magazine layouts and commented on it’s placement in the issue of the fictional fashion magazine “Mode.” Let’s find a new way to integrate products into televisions shows people! Come on, aren’t we supposed to be creative, trend setting and all that jazz?

6 COMMENTS

GeneMay 15, 2009 11:13 am

This is far from the first ham-fisted product placement from Ugly Betty. Remember when Amanda opened her desk drawer and began promoting microwave pasta lunches? Or when they based a whole episode around the Broadway show “Wicked?” Or when they wiped a mascara brush as a transition then went right into a mascara commercial without a break?

Yeah. I’m part of that audience that’s deserted the show as of tonight’s 7-UP opening sequence.

Sean DLMay 21, 2009 3:09 am

Get use to it, as more and more people use Tivo and personal DVR(And iTunes, Hulu, and Amazon ondemand) expect more and more product placement in tv shows, just like in the early old days of TV and radio.

With the cost of TV shows rising and more and more people not watching regular commercials(which pay for the shows, BTW) in-show placements will be the normal thing…and as long as it doesn’t take away from the show plot, and not a 30 min commercial, boycotting won’t be blow up…

Hell, I don’t even remember the 7-UP Cherry Antioxidant skit in last weeks episode of Ugly Betty until I went back and watched it agin(via my season pass on ITunes).

Brad RidlerMay 21, 2009 3:46 am

I have no problem with product placement when it makes sense, but the whole idea of the script being essentially “bought” is wrong to me. I fully understand that advertising subsidizes the cost of TV shows, we just need another way for them to integrate the product in a more “natural” way.

kimberlyMay 20, 2009 10:00 pm

I too was quite appalled with the blatant product placement of 7UP. In addition to that mentioned above, there were two cases of the soft drink on the board room table that was prominently displayed during the first 5-7 minutes of the show; and in a later scene, someone was shown drinking a can of the soft drink. I also will stop watching the show if such blantant product placement continues.

NLMay 27, 2009 1:46 am

I was ready to throw up when Amanda had the Healthy Choices in her desk. But, I just watched this episode over the weekend and I have to say it’s the worst display of product placement I’ve ever seen!

I work in PP and there are ways to organically add products into a script so that they’re not like commercial in the middle of the show.

It was disgusting and I’m questioning whether or not I’ll watch the next season because of it.

SaraMay 21, 2013 1:32 am

I just started watching this episode on Netflix, paused it, googled ‘Ugly Betty product placement’ and this is what came up.

I usually hate obvious product placement. When they showed the 7-Up displayed on the desk, a storyboard where the only colorful page on it was an ad for Cherry 7-Up, the red chairs (even though Mode’s theme color is always orange) and Wilhelmina’s all-red outfit, I thought that was their tacky way of trying to be subtle. I didn’t mind that so much but then they took it a step further and devoted some real time in the script to talking about the product.

Like NL said, I also disliked that Healthy Choices scene from an earlier episode. I hate “mid show commercials” like that but I honestly found the Cherry 7-Up placement to be really funny. Maybe it’s because it was so blatant. It’s like they worked really hard to get all the details right for this to appear as what some would call the laziest go at advertising you’d ever expect to see. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer and I know how hard everyone works to do things like this gracefully, but for me it turned into a bit of a gag and one of my personal favorites from the show.

Ugly Betty Blatant 7-Up Placement