You want me to buy a what? Or, my secret love for PPL.
The last of the unposted Theme of the Month posts

Kdrama has introduced me to many weird and wonderful things: the Truck of Doom, Amnesia, Evil Second Leads and, last but not least, PPL. Now UK tv and movies are also funded by advertising but it’s different. James Bond drives around in his Austin Martin for example, but nobody expects me to go out and buy one and advertising blocks on commercial tv are the perfect opportunity to make myself a cup of tea. Maybe kdrama is on to something by incorporating its ads within the programs itself.

My relationship with advertising has been warped from a young age. When we were kids, my brother and I would play a game where we would have to guess what a commercial was for as quickly as possible. We used to be annoyed by those ads that had the company name as the first image (thereby ruining our game) and we probably really irritated our parents by making them sit through the ad blocks before and after the news, so that we could compete for who had the ultimate ad knowledge.

This childhood game has seamlessly morphed into trying to spot the PPL in kdrama. My least favourite is the cosmetics PPL where all it takes is a scene of a woman putting her make-up on, or rubbing in layers of crème (without taking the make-up off!), or maybe one character complimenting the other on the softness of her skin. No, that’s boring. I like it when the drama actually makes the PPL part of the story.

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    I was complaining when watching Are You Human Too that surely a super-smart robot would know that riding an electric bike isn’t a form of exercise – that it has an engine is a clear give away – but then they used the scene to show how strong our robot was by having him carry the electric bikes up the stairs. My parents both ride electric bikes so I know that these things weigh a ton! And then the robot was riding the bike all by himself around the swimming pool and suddenly the PPL made me all sad. And don’t even get me started on the ‘Let’s ride these bikes until the batteries run out’ dialogue. It didn’t make me want an electric bike, it did make me want a robot – was that not the message?

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    So yes, PPL when done well makes you look at a scene in a different way. You know as a viewer that the writer had to get this image in somehow and if they do it in a smart way, I really like it. Subway PPL has become a bit of a running joke but 20th Century Boy and Girl managed to turn that round, by having our main girl hang out in Subway (and eating Subway ham sandwiches until she was sick and tired of them) because the actor she had a crush on was once seen in there. I loved how PPL referenced itself.

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      I saw this gif and internally squealed! @javinne, our favorite buddy-show! I would have picked it just for this. DB, what were you thinking?

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    I can only imagine that the writers have a love/hate relationship with PPL. In the first episode of Because This Life is Our First , Ji-ho is the PPL writer and the scenes that she adds are exactly the ones I love to laugh at. I thought it was a great idea to have one of the main characters be in charge of PPL – I imagine that the writer here is also not a fan of the cosmetics one and I was very interested to see the amount that companies paid for PPL.

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    King of Drama , which has forever warped how I see the making of dramas, goes one better: the opening episode is about a melo where the producer suddenly can get a lot of money if only they can add orange juice PPL to the final scene. The writer refuses to do it, and the producer needs to use all his subterfuge skills to con the assistant writer into writing it instead. She ends up adding a scene of how the main character actually gets a hold of the orange juice and drinks it dramatically before killing himself. As you do.

    So not only does this drama have the writer of PPL as a character, it’s actually having to add the PPL to the drama that sets the story going. They used PPL as the Inciting Incident for the entire drama. I loved it.

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    I can only imagine what the arguments must be like when there’s a sudden need to have doctors drink lemon drinks, or add scenes of people drying other people’s hair or rich people hoovering.

    I don’t know if PPL ever made me buy anything, even a hot robot cannot change my opinion of electric bikes, but I like the game of spotting PPL and I love it when it’s done right. Plus, to be honest, I absolutely prefer it over the ad-breaks that would be the alternative.

    Now… what did I do with my Roomba?

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      Did you watch My Secret Terrius? Because the PPL in that was so out of control that it almost became part of the show’s fun. Counting just how many thing they were trying to sell me became part of the drama’s fun.

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        No, I didn’t watch that one. It’s on my ‘if I have nothing else to watch, I’ll pick this up’ list.

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    Thanks for the insight and laugh, cloggie.

    Reading your childhood story about spot-the-ads game reminded me of a particular week in my childhood days when my Dad made me sit through all the ads because he needed fresh material to teach his language class. He would change the channel just so he can make sure he has watched all the new ads. *facepalm*
    I’m just glad that spotting even the most in-your-face PPL in kdrama is at least much more fun than waiting for the ads break that sometimes longer than the program itself to be over.

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