A week or so ago I took a look at the fake Infomercial creative concept (as did others), which seems a little played out at this point. A similar concept I’ve seen a lot of is the “isn’t funny how we’re – wink, wink – acknowledging that we’re doing a product placement and by doing so we’re actually cool and not really selling out, but actually we are, but at least we admit – nudge, nudge – that we don’t like doing it, but don’t dislike it enough to actually not do it.”

Brandchannel speaks of the technique here, using NBC’s 30 Rock as the example. And yes, I like the show, but they do this a lot. It’s reached the point where it really isn’t that funny, it’s just lazy.

When Mike Myers did this in Wayne’s World 2 it was a real commentary on the Hollywood machine:

But that was in 1993!  I’m all for tweaking marketers, but it’s time to come up with a new schtick.