NBC Wants You to Do Good. Why? A Look Inside 'Behavior Placement'

By Jason Newman Posted Apr 15th 2010 10:00AM

Think Dwight Schrute becoming a recycling-obsessed superhero on 'The Office' was the work of the show's clever writers? Think again. As an eye-opening Wall Street Journal article revealed last week, the plot line, and many others on your favorite NBC shows, was an advertising plant known as "behavior placement." As the article states: "The tactic ... is designed to sway viewers to adopt actions they see modeled in their favorite shows. And it helps sell ads to marketers who want to associate their brands with a feel-good, socially-aware show. Unlike with product placement, which can seem jarring to savvy viewers, the goal is that viewers won't really notice that Tina Fey is tossing a plastic bottle into the recycle bin, or that a minor character on 'Law and Order: SVU' has switched to energy-saving light bulbs."

The combination of NBC's ratings woes over the past decade, the steady rise of DVRs, Tivos and other commercial-bypassing machines and the general decline of the U.S. economy in recent years has led NBC to try new initiatives in an effort to lure advertisers. In today's age, buying ads may not be the sole route to get your product's message across.

"All the networks are doing things now that they never would have done 10 or 15 years ago when they were kings of the castle," says Brian Steinberg, Television Editor at Advertising Age. "They're allowing more intrusive placements and deeper connections with advertisers. We're at a point now where it's getting more egregious because the networks are economically flailing about for some new model."

With NBC already planning more green story lines and an upcoming week in June during which certain shows will emphasize healthy eating and exercise, the bigger question is not so much, "Is this good for advertisers?" but rather, "Will this actually do anything?"

"It's a totally lame approach in terms of a network or medium assuming that every viewer is a moron and that we're not going to get it," says Dr. Mary-Lou Galician, author of 'Handbook of Product Placement in the Mass Media' and head of Media Analysis & Criticism at Arizona State University. Galician points to a huge difference between a nerdy character like '30 Rock's' Liz Lemon or 'The Office's' Dwight Schrute recycling and the spike in library cards obtained after Henry Winkler's Fonz snagged one on 'Happy Days.'

"The placement has to be associated with a character or activity that is perceived by the viewer as positive," says Galician. "Fonzie was a hero to millions of young people. Liz Lemon is not somebody that we want to emulate. We laugh at her. The behaviors that these people do are hardly things that would incite viewers who don't already do those behaviors to do something. It's pandering and doesn't make much sense. It just rings so false."

NBC was unavailable for comment.

The idea of affecting behavioral change through television is older than you think. In 1989, a decade after the Fonz, Dr. Jay Winsten, Director of the Harvard Alcohol Project, met with writers and producers of such shows as 'L.A. Law,' 'Cheers' and 'The Cosby Show,' asking them to incorporate a new program in the United States: the designated driver. As legendary television writer/producer Norman Lear points out: "Over 160 prime time episodes include[d] subplots, scenes or dialogue telling viewers it's okay to party as long as someone stays sober for the drive home. One year later, a Gallup poll finds 67% of adults surveyed recognize the term 'designated driver.' In 1991, Winsten's new idea [became] a listing in Webster's College Dictionary."

More recently, groups like the Alliance for Family Entertainment, an organization of national advertisers that attempts to increase family-friendly programming, have been instrumental in initiating and promoting programs such as 'Gilmore Girls,' 'Everybody Hates Chris' and 'Friday Night Lights'.

Though most of us are loath to admit it, product placement can have very real and tangible effects on our buying decisions. Would "behavior placement" work in a similar way? Doubtful. As Galician points out, "It's incredibly easy to get people to throw a cigarette in their mouth, but it's incredibly hard to get it out of their mouth once they're addicted."

Translation: For most people, getting that cupcake at Magnolia Bakery because Carrie Bradshaw goes there won't be offset by a Liz Lemon treadmill workout. And while no one can fault NBC for promoting a healthier lifestyle -- few can argue that living healthier has negative consequences -- the focus remains, as always, squarely on the bottom line. That's why ads for Pepsi and Doritos, while contradictory and hypocritical in context to the messages promoted, won't be off the air anytime soon.

The practice has flourished partly because younger viewers (read: the most coveted demographic) have become savvier about when they're being marketed to simply through the need for advertisers to hammer their message across amid an increasing number of distractions and diversions. "It's gotten to the point now where people automatically assume that an advertiser shoved their product in there whenever they see something," says Steinberg, who points to the '30 Rock' episode in which Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek reconcile over McDonald's Mcflurrys (for those keeping tabs at home -- writers chose the dessert with no involvement from McDonalds).

Steinberg and Galician both stress the need for the viewer to be more aware of what they're watching and what messages are being transmitted to them.

"This is an era in which consumers really need to say, 'Why are people saying or doing that?' 'Why is my content this way?' Is it because it was written this way or because there's a deeper relationship with an advertiser that is subtly shifting the creation of what I enjoy?," says Steinberg.

Galician goes further. "There will always be pushers of various things that are not in our best interests even though they may be entertaining at the moment. It's not the sender of the message. The onus is on us as consumers because the networks will give us what we want. Their devotion is not to us but their investors and sponsors. The programming is just the filler between the commercials."

ABC, CBS, and FOX have yet to adopt the "behavior placement" model. Yet.

Tags: 30 rock, nbc, the office

Comments

(231)

Saturday 17 April

By WOW

Vote down Vote up Report this

This is the main point in television period.... Television has raised a lot of kids that are in single parent, two working parent and lazy parents babysitters! MTV / VH1 has made all the kids want to be rappers and fist pumping gweedo's and the females want to party and dresss like skanks!

The real world shows kids in a cool house and drinking and partying all the time!
Sex in the City shows you have to be like Kerry, and her friends hot fashion and man problems
Desperate Housewives teaches how life in the suburbs is supposed to be....

Change Programing Change the World......!

By Jim

John: And you're just the typical, paranoid, McCarthyist Republican. I suggest that you seek professional help at once regarding your paranoid delusions and self-destructive hatred.

Sunday 18 April

By hawk

Ad-hominid

By bob

Highest Rank Vote down Vote up Report this

is this new? TV writers been trying to mould minds
and impact behavior for many years. is a major
propaganda regime, mostly for the shallow and vain.

By Marcyshamb

Writers, directors and producers have been writing their personal
agendas and biases into everything they produce in hopes of shaping society since moving pictures were invented. And they have
succeeded to a great extent..unfortunately more in a negative direction than positive....

Think all the stereotypes, all the biases, all the good verses evil 'in their minds'... And they know full well the power they have over these audiences having seen the results for themselves while having the many decades to fine tune the craft. Now we are told that sponsors are the main reason, ratings, lack of power, etc...LOL... Of course they have played, on a concious level to the sponsors, and on both consious and subconsious level to the people from the very beginning.

Does the writer of this article think we are stupid or just too young and green to have any memory/experience/recollection of the past and present?

Marcy

By Richard

High Rank Vote down Vote up Report this

Why on't you have a poll asking how many people will stop watching NBC because they do not want to be manipulated.

I stopped watching NBC because I resent being treated like a mindless fool.

By GEORGE

its called mind control, eventually they will go subliminal if they haven't already.

By Crabby

If this is subliminal messaging they're doing a really bad job of it.

By jharrah1

There is nothing on nbc to watch there are to many channels to watch thanks to cable NBC = NOTHING BUT CRAP I am a adult I dont need a channel to brain wash me I am gonna do what I want to do I recycle and do the right by the earth !!!!!

By bcrd500

I have noticed it and end up hating shows that attempt to teach us how to live. Furthermore, I have never seen anybody eat chinese food with chopsticks, but Hollywood would have you believe it occurs in every household in America.

By POLOTHECLOWN

I'm sure certain high placed "Americans" would have us all eating with chop sticks, had they their druthers. "Behavior Placement" or whatever you want to call it is all part of the plan.

By crafty mama

for the last 20 years or so we eat Asian food at least three times per week, no matter where we eat you can count the number of people who use FORKS on one hand, in Southern California most people eat Asian food with chop sticks. Do you eat tacos and pizza with a fork? To really savor food; eat it as the natives do.

crafty mama thats a load of crap a chopstick makes no difference than a fork does and for the taco with a fork thing thats just a strawman.

Monday 19 April

By Smitty

Gee, and just a few years ago they were saying all the sex and violence they show has no effect on anybody. Guess they finally figured that one out!

By wesheajr

I find TV very educational. Everytime someone turns it on, I go read a good book.

By Daniel

I think it is pretty clever. If not anything else at least it adds a little bit of character to the otherwise plot-based actions of what we are watching.

By tfarnon

Oh, please. People have been emulating TV characters' behavior for years. They have been emulating their appearances for years. If I see something new that appeals to me from a character on TV that appeals, I'll look into it. It doesn't mean I'll fall for it hook, line and sinker, but I don't see the evils of putting information out there. If some TV character on a favored show was shown using a Thighmaster, that doesn't mean I'd run out and buy/use one. It only means I might look into it.

By joy

I Do Not watch NBC. Not Law & Order, not Jay Leno, not Today.
Do I miss it? No. And do you think they are putting across a message to watch NBC, watch NBC? I don't know.
But do you think the other fab 3 are doing the same thing?
Gee, I'll have to see what Callie and H are doing about their plastic bottles. Not to mention what those dancing stars are recycling or those talented people on American Idle! Gosh wasn't
one of those shows on NBC? Maybe with all their money they could put on news shows to take up their air time.

By Deb

Duh.... How do you suppose Obama got elected......?

By d jane do

History lesson time: (1st lecture Broadcasting)! TV and radio, were developed specifically to sell products thru' advertisement, hence, the "Soap" opra. Human behavior has always been a apart of that media historical time line: "Brought to you by. . ." or "Sponsored by . . ." Do you think OTC et.al. advertisers would sponsor Dr. Welby M.D. if he did not have the kindly bedside Dr. Knows Best behavior to sell their products. The 50's were riddled with behavior placement. Their is a whole discipline in psychology specifically targeting advertisment and humane behavior. Advertising agency high psychologist just fot this purpose - have for many-a-decades!So, if you are appalled, STOP WITH THE TV & RADIO!

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