Culturally significant or common household names always found a way into literature but it is the first time I find two mentions of brands so blatantly placed that the only conclusion I’m led to reach is of paid product placement.
The book in question is “The House in the Woods”, by Mark Dawson. In the very first few paragraphs there is a mention to Hello Fresh, with a not so subtle description of the service, along with an admission of a character on how the instructions to prepare a meal are so simple even they can follow it, and a mention to Spotify. Deeper into the book I’ve already noticed a mention of Nescafé instant coffee.
None of these mentioned brands needed to be there. The writer seems proficient enough to be able to write without resorting to such name placements. The story telling is fluid, with a smooth but dense tone to it, which is something I enjoy in crime/drama/mistery novels.
Has this been a thing for a long time and only now I’m noticing the elephant in the room or is this a rising trend?
Everyone needs and deserves to make a living but not like this.
Thinking about Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 novels, namedropping cars and booze brands is a thing. It establishes Bond as a man who appreciates luxury as well as he handles danger. Still lacks emotional depth or backstory, at least in what I remember of “Dr. No”. Did Nabakov namedrop Humbert’s car make/model in “Lolita”? I don’t remember but I feel like it wouldn’t have been a red flag there. There are probably a good handful of brnd-naming examples in Stephen King’s work.
So it’s a debatable choice but there are legit situations where a brand name hints at character, or serves to anchor the story in verité.
Another example is the character named Ford Prefect in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, where wildly improbable coincidences are integral to the overall absurdism.
There are probably a good handful of brnd-naming examples in Stephen King’s work.
That one Dark Tower book (book 5?) has some odd Harry Potter references
Could you quote the passage go get an idea if it reads really like an as?
She wasn’t as good a cook as he was and, not full of confidence that she would be able to pull it off, she had bought a meal box from Hello Fresh after seeing one of their ads on Facebook. She had a turkey, all the vegetables and sauces, and a booklet of instructions that even she could follow. She had selected her Christmas playlist on Spotify and had found, to her surprise, that she had enjoyed herself more than she had expected.
And now I notice I even overlooked Facebook.
This passage makes me wonder if the book is AI slop
I wouldn’t put it above it.
The author has been active since 2011 and is phenomenally productive.
Old school pulpers were pretty capable of sitting down and putting out a story in a week or less. Being self published, autocorrect can pass for all the editing and reviewing a work from this author gets. Yet there are only so many hours a person can write.
Thanks those are a lot of brands dropped in a short passage…
Thanks, I hate this.
I sincerely apologize but you’re welcome.
I ''ve seen it a lot in modern day thrillers. I doubt most of it is paid, rather an effort to make the narrative more grounded.
It’s a tool but there are way to use it without it sounding artificial.
Yes, it is cringy usually.
I don’t feel that simply mentioning a product name is necessarily product placement. That said, this example is hilarious. It sounds like AI writing having trained on podcast sponsorships.
I think when the ‘product’ is something relevant ro the plot somehow it’s best to just rename it, because otherwise it’s gonna sound like an ad. But a character ordering a Coke at a restaurant or whatever is fine IMO.
Stieg Larsson did this massively in his Millennium trilogy with brands like IKEA and Apple 20 years ago if I remember correctly.
Really? I have to check it. Interesting read?
The product placement or the whole books?
The Books are really great. (Also it depicts rather real hacking*, instead of the usual hacking tropes.)
*It’s not all about hacking. Themes are among other things are: corruption, violence/murder, femicide and journalism (and more, but I already spoiled too much).
That was a poor question on my part, wasn’t it?
Seems interesting. I’ll try to take a look at it.
Nah, sometimes I’m just pretty dumb ;)
Have fun with it!
It’s the girl with the dragon tattoo series fyi
Really?! That series seemed to fizzle out in my country. I remember seeing the titles on the shelves but never heard anyone talk about it.
"An Uber, an Uber! My kingdom for an Uber! "
Catching that in the wild would be glorious and disheartning.
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I mean, that’s a more guaranteed way to make a living than hoping the next book will be as well received as the previous one.
We as a society need to step and and support the arts, in the meantime some private companies are doing more for the arts than the consumers are.
Unless we can find a means to cut out of the equation the standard publishing houses to force books to become more affordable, I see it as very difficult.
In my country, paperback pocket edition, historically cheaper and specifically made to draw more readers, simply vanished from the market.
I could buy a full lenght novel anywhere from 3,50€ to 7,50€ and find that kind of book in coffee shops, euro stores, etc. Nowadays, the cheapest I can find a new book starts at 12,50€.
There was a time I thought self publishing could be the answer but the dragons raised their heads and razed that hope.
If you think product placement is corporations “doing more for art,” then it seems like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what art actually is.
Art is suffering?
Why should an aspiring artist starve before they gain notoriety?
I think we should fund everyone’s way of life with a universal income, but we aren’t doing that, I don’t fault an artist for trying to find a way to survive this capitalist hellscape. Guaranteed income to write a book that might gain you enough of an audience so you can leave product placement behind, I don’t blame the artist.
Do you think art should only be produced by those with existing means?
This is one of the most deliberately bad faith readings of someone else’s point I’ve ever seen.
What the actual fuck is this take. Corporations polluting the artistic landscape by normalizing covert advertisements is “doing something for the arts”, now? Next you’ll tell me that film executives paying for generic slop film #6338929394 to be made counts as an artistic endowment 😭
