I came across an article regarding product placement on Burn Notice and thought it was kind of interesting. Apparently the product placement of the Diet Mountain Dew soft drink in the episode Sins of Omission didn't go over as hoped. Here's an excerpt of the article:



Anyway, I was thinking it might be kind of interesting to keep track of the product placement in Burn Notice. Here's my personal favorite product placement moment on the show:




I wonder why Dannon and/or Yoplait and/or Stonyfield Farm haven't gone after product placement on the show yet. In that scene with the Diet Mountain Dew, Michael takes what is clearly a Yoplait yogurt out of the fridge (in spite of the fact that JD had to hide the brand name)...



Also, I just have to give a shout-out to the "product placement"/sponsorship from General Motors. There have been some fabulous looking GM cars on display in Burn Notice this past season! It's been a lot of fun.

I have to wonder if either Spam or Cap'n Crunch were very pleased either, considering the "erratic" comment associated with their products ;-)

I laughed so hard when I saw that spam and Cap'n Crunch. And Fi's comment, something to the effect of " no wonder he's so unpredictable" All I could think of was poor victor must have been really constipated from all that lunchmeat and cereal and no veggies.

Mountain Dew, yogurt and Cap'n Crunch. That's a heck of a diet!

Now if y'all will excuse me, I got a bowl of Crunch Berries waitin' for me...

P.S. Perhaps I missed it - what would be Sam's favorite beer then, and is the brand a sponsor of the show?

Yes good observation Phil! But how about the BIG one? Sharon Gless and the ever present Marlboro cigarette dangling from her mouth? Yeuck!

Well the BEST product placement in the show is the SAAB I am a dedicated Volvo driver BUT I seriously went out to the SAAB website and looked Successful product placement at its best I did exactly what they wanted me to do go shop for a SAAB

I thought the scene with the diet mountain dew was kind of odd (to me anyway) because of the fact that J.D. is sooo AGAINST drinking sodas of any kind.
I kept thinking he would NEVER touch that diet mountain dew with a "ten foot pole"!
I don't know if you remember the "HEllO THIS IS ONSTAR" scene in Lesser Evil?
I thought it was kind of funny because of the "I cannot believe i HAVE to do a Onstar add WHILE i am filming a scene during the show" look on J.D's face!

Of course, there's also those classic DirecTV moments from those great Season 1 episodes:

OLD FRIENDS


SAM: Mike, what the hell's going on? You got shotguns, you're picking fights for no reason.
MICHAEL: Dwayne Wade is overrated.
SAM: Fine. Lie to me. But next time you go Chuck Norris on some guy, don't do it in one of my favorite bars.
MICHAEL: The Sandbar.
SAM: They got dollar well drinks, DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket - in HD. And did you see the T-shirts those girls were wearin'? And now I can't go back there. That hurts.


HARD BARGAIN:

FIONA: Quality's nice. Is that... satellite?
NICK (Dude with a Problem): It's, uh, DirecTV HD. That's why the picture's bigger. What the hell are we talking about? Look, I know that you asked me to stop talking about it and just stay here and watch TV, but I can't watch any more! Are you gonna be able to save her? Please say yes.

I like this thread! I saw that article about Diet Mountain Dew and found it interesting.

I must confess that I often look for the Saab convertible while driving or in parking lots. Since I live in Suburbia I don't see the Saab too often among all the minivans and SUV's. It's a great looking car, though!

Great screencaps as usual. I enjoy them very much.

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that finds this stuff interesting. Yes, I read the Mountain Dew article a few days back and thought how positive for Burn Notice that they are getting these types of brands are allowing their product to be featured on the show. Brands like the makers of Spam and the yopliat people etc etc, that is all negotiated and most shows are not permitted to use that unless the product makers approves of how its going to be featured, what the audience is for the show etc etc.

This just tells us that Burn Notice is a production that is being embranced more and more.

I love the Saab, too.... but if I ever win the lottery I'm getting a Caddie like Sam used to have!

So, I have to say...I LOVE product placements. Cars, foods, shoes, accessories (like watches, sunglasses, cell phones) etc. It's like a fun game to play. Too bad I don't have piles of money laying around to buy all the cool stuff. As a recovering soda addict, I really really really wanted a diet mountain dew!

I also totally thought spam was fake...like, how is that concept possibly a good idea? "meat" in a can? really?
If any of you watch The Office, they prominently feature a certain brand (anybody know it?) when it comes to food products of all types. One of my favorites. It's always cool to see stuff I actually buy/own on TV. Yes, i live a very boring small town life haha

MGD 64, anyone?

I remember the Mountain Dew, it was the 'scientist' and Michael and his friend took prints from it for the key. I was wondering why the guy was drinking 'diet' for he looked like he was in the normal limits for weight and most scientists know how bad artificial sweetner is. Now the Captain Crunch thing...Fi said no wonder the guys behavior was so erratic because he ate Captain Crunch and Spam....not a good advertisement....now the yogert is a different story...I think I have raised the demand for 'blueberry yogert' singlehandedly

OH and the 925 Saab....I could not find one like that in a 200 mi radius...they were #1 in safety also for that size car....I want one!
Fi will have a new car no doubt for the rest of the seasons...she got rid of it in S309

I'd never bought it before NOW I keep it in my fridge.

I love looking at the different products they show in TV shows. It's so much fun when the show starts to get boring (of course with BN it's on my 10 time watching the epi.) to look for all the products in it. I too have suddenly found blueberry yogurt much more tasteful than ever before, lol. All I eat now is piratically yogurt! Remember the episode (sorry I'm really bad with names) in season 3 where strickler gives Mike that basket full of yogurt. I just watched that again today and I think it's danamls, they did a close up shot of it and I'm not positive but the container had a similar shape to it. It wasn't his usual yoplai either so just wondering if anybody else noticed that either.

btw I just have to say that fake sweetener isn't bad unless you eat massive a mounts of the stuff. other wise it really doesn't make a difference. And maybe he just likes the flavor better, of course I'm sure it was for the product sale, but still. I ONLY drink diet soda and I'm a perfectly fine weight. Actually my brother has diabetes so diet stuff is a lot better for him, so now that's all my mom buys. But I'm so used to diet things now that I can't even drink normal soda. I hate the stuff, can't stand it. LOVE soda, but it has to be diet.

ok, When you all started talking MD, I thought you meant the Epi where they were 'making' steroids....wasn't that like Amp or something???? Blew my mind....

And of course, there's the Saab, the Buicks, and can't forget the CHARGER! (and the Mustang Sam was driving in the chase this past half )

My personal fav (thought you have to keep your eyes wide open...sort of....) was the Arizona Sweet Southern tea the Michael pulls out of Maddie's fridge when Fi's playing poker with the gals...(forgive me, I'm totally clueless when it comes to epi names....) I LOVE that stuff!

MGD64...absolutely....and Bacardi must be making a pretty penny whenever the word "mojito" is mentioned (I never even knew there was such a thing, never mind tried one, till this show!)

Tommy Bahama....Jimmy Choo...and Michael's designer suit tag (name escapes me at the moment)

Is 'C4' Considered a brand name?????....Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Wasn't there a particular wine/champane schmuckboy was explaining when they made their 'partnership' (could have been fake, I'm no conusure....<obviously, can't even spell the word!!! >)

I'm sure the list could go on and on and on and on and on.............


KA23

Sam's beer was a light 64 calorie beer that was blatantly displayed in one episode and he made mention that he was only drinking light beer these days what ever that beer brand is...

MGD 64, I mentioned it in a previous post haha I posted it because I thought that the product placements for it were way too obvious and slightly annoying haha.

The MGD placement goes beyond what we saw on screen--the season 3 T-shirts the BN crew was wearing all had Miller on the back, and various pieces of filming equipment were also plastered with Miller stickers.

Nix has said that he has no problem with product placement that makes sense. Said that OnStar ding we heard in "Lesser Evil" pretty much paid for all the car explosions.

I don't mind the product placements as long as they are not tacky. I remembered hearing Matt Nix say that about OnStar and "Lesser Evil" and IMO if that's how we are getting all the cool stunts and explosions I say keep it up!! I would much rather have a few product placements and get really cool stunts done right then have no placements and just have so-so stunts and explosions

Yeah, I don't particularly mind product placements as long as they make sense, and are done tastefully/subtly. I like Fiona's Saab (I'm sort of sad it's gone), and I thought the use of OnStar was pretty funny. Maybe because I didn't really think of it as a "product placement" at the time. And it didn't seem out-of-character for Michael to make use of it as a tool (or for Management to make use of it)! However, I thought the MGD 64 product placement was a little heavy-handed. Sam wasn't just drinking (or ordering) MGD 64, he was advertising it to Michael, which seemed a little odd to me. --m

Oh, MILLER 64, that is the light beer I was referring to earlier, at first I thought MGD 64 was some sort of gun

Ohhhh lol That's what I thought too! Glad I'm not the only one who doesn't know my beer from my guns!

I have no problem with product placement at all. It's definitely very lucrative, bringing in tons of cash to use for whatever purpose (explosions, apparently!). I guess my question is, how do they gauge if it's working? For example, we all know that Sam is into MGD 64, would I ever buy it? No. Are they looking for product awareness or product awareness that leads to actual purchases? You can say it, I know I'm a huge nerd.

Also, Motorola is pretty much making out. They had the razor, and I think they make blackberry too. Was that a product placement or just happen stance?

GOOOOOO Onstar!!!! Someone needs to give Sam a sense of direction anyway!!!! (Just Kidding!)

I was watching Signals and Codes last night and you can clearly see that Michael is shipping his ancient Colombian antiquities with Fed Ex. Does that count?

Oooo good spotting!!

Um, remind me not to go drinking with you guys!

Actually YES I think....does anyone here work for the network?
On the Major productions I have worked on except when there is no way to control the background they had the environment controlled down to the cars driving down the street. Every background person and car was paid and releases signed. Any brand name including delivery trucks was placed there. The only time one did not have to sign a release was when it was a scene like a football stadium where they could not see your face clearly.
I do not know if that is how it works on the hour tv productions but I suppose it would be the same.