Adventures in Product Placement: Saturday Night Live & Pepsi

Wow! That was quite a Super Bowl. Well, it was quite a 4th quarter at least. As a Cleveland Browns fan I was pulling for the Cardinals, but their defense just couldn't stop the Steelers when they needed to. Oh well.

So what did you think of the commercials? Any favorites? General reaction seems to be that the Doritos' Crystal Ball ad and Budweiser's' Clydesdale in love ad were the favorites (Watch all the ads and see viewer's quantitative response at USA Today's Ad Meter). Towards the end of the game did you catch this odd ad from Pepsi?:


For those of you unaware MacGruber is a recurring character on "Saturday Night Live." On the show, each MacGruber skit is broken up into 3 parts and aired throughout that night's program. The premise is always the same: Placed in a tough spot, MacGruber tries to escape MacGyver-style (nice cameo by Richard Dean Anderson in the skit), only he never makes it in time because of some ridiculous argument. The 3 skits usually have a common thread that becomes more and more absurd with each skit.

This past week's episode of "Saturday Night Live" (with host Steve Martin) featured 3 MacGruber skits all about Pepsi. The above video, which was repurposed during the Super Bowl, was the 2nd of the 3 skits. Here is the 1st and 3rd:




Funny? I think so. They're as funny as any of the other MacGruber sketches. But they aren't comedy sketches, they are ad time purchased by Pepsi and aired during commercial breaks. "SNL" and Pepsi chose to blur those lines a little when airing the ads on Saturday night.

Known for their commercial parodies, "SNL" begins and ends each commercial break with a short bumper to let the audience know they are leaving parody territory and entering the real world of advertising. These bumpers are usually quick images of NYC cityscape with the "SNL" logo or an announcement of who's' hosting next week. These MacGruber commercials all aired IMMEDIATELY AFTER the bumpers, tricking the audience into thinking they are still watching the show. It worked on me, I didn't fast-forward over them.


Is this OK? Bumpers have been a staple in children's programming for decades; used as an ethical way to tell kids they are no longer being entertained to, they are being pitched to. As adults, we're just supposed to recognize that. If the MacGruber ads aired during the middle of the commercial breaks I don't think anyone would raise a fuss. "30 Rock" has done this in the past. Instead, they are being treated as sketches by "SNL" and NBC (even being listed as such on their respective websites), and as advertisements by Pepsi. Which one is it? I don't think you can have it both ways. "SNL" should just admit they created some "SNL"-themed Pepsi commercials. There is nothing wrong with that. But there is something wrong with passing them off as 3 minutes of air time not purchased by Pepsi.


What do you think? Would you be OK seeing more of this?