Product Placement
The Office has had product placement deals with Staples and the Olympic baler, as well as mentioning in dialogue or displaying clear logos for products such as Sandals Resorts, HP, Apple, and Gateway computers, and Activision's Call of Duty video game series. In "The Merger", Kevin Malone uses a Staples-branded shredding machine to shred a Staples-branded CD-R and many other non-paper items, including a salad. As with HP, Cisco Systems, a supplier of networking and telephone equipment, pays for product placement, which can be seen on close-up shots of the Cisco IP Telephones. Some products have additional branding labels attached; this can be clearly seen with the HP photo printer on Toby's desk in season 6, and is less noticeable with the Cisco phones. In "The Secret" Michael takes Jim to Hooters to discuss Jim's feelings for Pam.
Many products featured are not part of product placement agreements, but rather inserted by writers as products the characters would use to create realism under the guise of a documentary. Chili's restaurants were used for filming in "The Dundies" and "The Client", as the writers believed they were realistic choices for a company party and business lunch. Though not an explicit product placement, the producers of the show had to allow Chili's to have final approval of the script before filming, causing a scene of "The Dundies" to be hastily rewritten when the chain objected to the original version. Apple Inc. received over four minutes of publicity for the iPod when it was used as a much-desired gift in "Christmas Party", though the company did not pay for the placement. The travel website TripAdvisor.com was featured during Season 4 when after a visit to Dwight's "agritourism" bed and breakfast, Schrute Farm, Jim and Pam post an online review about their stay. The show reportedly approached the travel review website about using their name on the show and TripAdvisor set up a review page for the fictional B&B which itself received hundreds of reviews. The appearance of Second Life in the episode "Local Ad" was rated eighth in the top ten most effective product placements of 2007.
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“The writer’s language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.”
—Paul De Man (1919–1983)