And what do we say about name-dropping (as in brands) in present-day fiction?

Perks said:

I never thought this thread would make me fat.

Where, oh where, can I find this?

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Wal-Mart sells them here, as do a few pharmacies. They're more expensive ($5.50 for a 6-pack), but that's because you can only buy them in the original 8oz. heavy glass bottles with crimped caps. No cans and no twist-tops.

Wal-Mart also sells Coca-cola imported from Mexico that's cane sugar sweetened. MUCH better than that nasty corn syrup.

I think product insertion can be effective if carefully executed, but could also risk alienating present and future readers from the story. If the reader isn't familiar with the products and their cultural connotation, then the result is an utterly failed attempt at characterization. Product insertion also reduces a work's timelessness. Imagine if Jane Austen had relied on brands and labels in Pride and Prejudice. We're told about Miss Bingley's penchant for such and such dress maker, that kind of perfume, this particular area of London and white ostrich feather fans. Many modern day readers would be at a loss to conclude that her character is shallow from this information alone. Such characterization could be easily provided without jeopardizing the story's ability to connect with readers of all places and times.

Do corporations pay writers to do this?

I'm sure I had a Coke and a smile somewhere in my memoir.

Brands were less ubiquitous when we weren't a globally connected society. Now things are connected like that. I can see both sides of it. I can also see how the publisher and author could profit from product placement, but I could only see that on a Dan brown-sales sort of level. Anyone remember the 90-second Domino's Pizza shot from the Ninja Turtles movie?

Somewhere upstream, someone said the brand was important to the character. For instance, it's important to me know what sort of soda/cola or beer the character is drinking. What sort of car he's driving. The sort of gun he pulls out of his jacket and kills the guy with. And so on. In more literary terms, the objects might be more symbolic of something else -- the gun as phallus or the red shirt as the motif for anger ... whatever.

I'd think like any other communication, the words or techniques you use boil down to intent. What do you want to accomplish as a writer?

However, to your OP, I think I'd answer "they are being used more" because of the global markets and the publishers desires to push partnered brands.

And I like Ding Dongs.

To the seltzer water, it doesn't have a prominent brand that more people would know it by rather than its generic equivalent, too. Cola does, Coke and Pepsi (and people can further be dissected when they drink either one; Coke is older, Pepsi younger and so on). And that's also another factor in determining brand name use: is there a brand of whatever you are mentioning that outweighs simply using the generic name? And, again, how does it factor into your writing?

There is no other Twinkie. Would you call it a Frisbee or a flying disc? So, I'd buy using that. There's no other iMac, either. However, there are dozens of PC makers and no one really identifies with the brand of PC (except they do ID the operating system because there's no other for PC, Windows)

The stuff that Sex in the City got into (and other books) fed on the fashion culture and the "keeping up with the joneses" fetish that many people have with Material goods. It made sense in the SITC ecosystem because of the lives the women led. It would not in, say, Little House on the Prarie. And that example rivets down the "what do you want your communication to accomplish and what's your audience" idea.

The James Bond example is a fantastic one, but I always thought it worked because Bond was a man of the world who'd be into all these brands. Discriminatory. And the reader might flock to that doscrimination as a means of weighing his/her own brand identity. So, even the Bond thing paralelled the SITC idea, as well. But that's a fantastic mention.

So, then we can wipe that thread out called "Perks is caffiene addicted and paranoid about her weight" then?

Perks said:

For me, this is only important if it's important. You know what I mean?

I drink club soda selzter waters. So, you could guess about me that I shun caffeine, or am paranoid about my weight, or whatever. (Neither of which is true. I just don't like sweet drinks, but enjoy the bubbles) But, in my case, the brand of seltzer doesn't matter.

There are certainly times when it does, and then I've no gripe.

But the why we're seeing it more? I think you've gotten it exactly right. I like it when things at least make some sense.

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Wayne K said:

Do corporations pay writers to do this?

I'm sure I had a Coke and a smile somewhere in my memoir.

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Fay Weldon's The Bulgari Connection was sponsored, full of brand names and paid for by...yes, Bulgari.

I never thought of brand names as being something negative. Maybe I've been lucky in that the authors I read don't over-do it?

People go to Starbucks and order frappuchinos or lattes and drive different sorts of cars. "He played a video game on his iPhone," for example. I think using brand names can tell us a lot about setting, the type of person they are and the culture they're in - Carrie's obsession with shoes in Sex and the City being extreme, but there you go. jst5150 covered that pretty well.

I wouldn't use the actor lookalike cheat, though. Much more fun to describe the twinkling topaz eyes and fine masculine jaw and rippling pecs and...

...I have to go watch Australia now...

Like many of you, I'm not that concerned with brand names, though I did snicker a lot about the point in American Psycho when Bateman can tell the brand name of a woman's pantyhose while she's still fully clothed. That's the sort of thing that yanks one right out of the story (though that book is full of such moments) and into hurling-book-against-wall mode.

Used judiciously, brand names tell one a lot about a character. I think I expect them more in both annoying chick-lit and mysteries, where brand loyalty might be a telling point. (My mind inevitably wanders back to O Brother, Where Art Thou?: "Well, I don't want Fop, goddamn it! I'm a Dapper Dan man!"

Perks said:

There's this project.

I wrote that article last year and I haven't heard whether the backlash strangled the project or not. Here's hoping.

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That is the epitome of wrong, THAT is selling out (as per another thread). Then gearing it toward young girls? Honestly, isn't high school and school yard cliques enough to contend with along with Hollywood pushing thin and thinner to these young malleable minds too much already?

These young "girl children", as a friend would put it, have too much already on their plates to contend with for self esteem and style\looks issues. That, as a mother talking here, disgusts me. It really makes me wonder what people won't exploit to make a buck these days.

As a reader, most brand names and movie star comparisons are lost on me. I neither know nor care what the writer is talking about.

Three name-drops on one page is enough for me to throw out the book from lack of interest.

Remember butterscotch krimpets?

Gedaechtnis said:

Remember butterscotch krimpets?

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Is that some kind of hair extension?

One of my characters is a diet Dr. Pepper fiend simply because I am.

Seriously though, if I drop a product reference in, it's usually in a sense of "spirit of place" - a uniquely British or American item, say. Or a character referring to a regional brand, like my Dr. Pepper fiend commenting that "I used to drink Mr. Pibb all the time; it's the same thing." (Soda I used to see everywhere when we went to Arkansas visiting family and yeah, I remember it tasting an awful lot like Dr. Pepper.) I try to make it a rule not to drop a brand name unless there's a reason.

However, there's one character I have who's supposed to be very vain and shallow and superficial, with her, it's always whatever expensive designer name "the magazines" have declared "TRES HOT!" and she's openly scornful of the classless peons who actually buy stuff at - ewww - Marks & Spencer.

(Although I admit one character's fascination with vintage Vauxhalls is a nod to a RL friend who also loves classic British cars....)