Ad Nauseam: The New York Times Notices, Too

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


This story in today’s NYT repeats a theme (and several of the actual examples) of “Ad Nauseam” a piece that Dave and Elizabeth did in our current issue on how “Madison Avenue is scrambling to stick ads anywhere it can, from children’s books to bathroom stalls.”

My personal favorite examples of product placement include:

After Israel bombed Lebanon last summer, Johnnie Walker put up billboards in Beirut showing a damaged bridge with the slogan “Keep Walking.” A spokeswoman said the ads were meant to “capture a popular mood about moving forward.”

A recent Broadway production of Sweet Charity was rewritten to plug Gran Centenario tequila. José Cuervo described the change as “elegant, organic, not forced.”

In Instant Def, an online movie made by Snickers, members of the Black Eyed Peas work in a Snickers factory and battle an evil rapper who is a “fabrication justification of some corporation’s imagination.”

But the whole thing is a hoot. Read it here. And sources here.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate