STRICTLY COMMERCIAL
by Raymond M. Coulombe

For quite a few years now, movies have sold advertising for products featured prominently. The first movie that brought that to my consciousness was ET. M & M would not pay to be featured, so the extraterrestrial was lured out of hiding with Reeses pieces. It did wonders for sales of Reeses pieces.

A few nights back, they ran Godzilla on one of those movie cable channels. The product endorsements were blatant, in-your-face examples of rabid advertisement. It seemed as if the monster attacked a container ship to get to all the Bumblebee tuna. The advertisement took over the entertainment. Of course, the entertainment value of Godzilla was so marginal that no amount of commercial content could hurt it any more than the script writing all ready had.

Now for years writers have used brand names in their stories. It's a good way to reveal something about a character. A Harley Davidson Motorcycle rider is a different person than someone who's ride is a Ducati El Monstro. A Lexus driver probably has more coins to rub together than someone who drives a 10 year old Ford Escort. Brand names are used to reveal things about characters, develop settings, and, in general, make a fantastic story seem more real.

Unfortunately, writers are not usually especially business savvy people. We use all those brand names for free! What's wrong with us? It's not like we make too much money to begin with. From now on, I'll only write on my Hewlett Packard computer, sitting on my Ethan Allan chair, wearing my Nike footwear, as I sip my Green Mountain Coffee laced with just a dollop of Glenlivet single malt scotch (on sale this month in NH liqueur stores) if they pay me to do it. I mean, it can't hurt the story, can it?

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