Look, I’m a fan of NBC’s action-comedy Chuck, but there’s no doubt that the producer of the show are the kings of product placement. I couldn’t count on both hands the number of times one of the characters was eating (and then commenting on) a tasty Subway sandwich. Hey, this is our fault — we all fast forward through commercials or leave the room, right?
So I guess this is the next step: build an entire episode (or in this case, a “webisode”) around a product, in this instance, Halo: Reach. In this series, Chuck character’s Jeff and Lester go on a road trip in search of Bungie’s upcoming first-person shooter. The character Lester actually says, out loud, the game’s name and the date of its midnight launch before saying “I refuse to live without the new Halo.”
A paid advertisement in the guise of a television program doesn’t get more obvious than this, but fans of the show should get a kick out of the extra content featuring characters they love. Just remember, Halo: Reach launches on September 14, and you should start lining up for the midnight launch now. Consider bringing a Subway sandwich as a snack; you might get hungry waiting in line waiting for Bungie’s latest, available exclusively on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 this fall!
Uh… yeah.
