Product placement in the movies
It’s part of the business - and part of the real world: just as brands are ubiquitous in today’s world (just look around your desk, there is a brand on your monitor, your keyboard and many other items lying around) so are they in the movies. The only difference between the movies and the real world: movie producers in some cases get paid to present certain brands and their products in a favorous position. Sure, not all brands popping up in a movie (or tv series) might actually be paid for product placements as some might just be necessary in a director’s view to present ouor real world corrently, but quite a few are paid for.
Anyway, everytime a brand pops up on the screen (whether paid for or not) influences the image of the brand and how we as viewers recognize it. Therefore it is really interesting to see which brands show up in which movie. BrandChannel.com does a great job with this in its weekly BrandCameo category for the movies ruling the US box office. Right now there are two Disney features in the list…
“National Treasure: Book of Secrets” and “Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour”. The latter obnviously includes numerous of the official Hannah Montana products popping up, but also adidas, Aéropostale, Alesis, Apple, Baldwin, BMW, Coca-Cola, Converse, Nike, Range Rover, Sabian and Yamaha. The list is a bit longer for the second installment of National Treasure: Apple, Aquafina, BlackBerry, Borders, Cadillac, Cisco, Converse, Ferrari, Ford, Fuller’s London Pride, HP, Land Rover, Mayflower, Mercedes, Motorola, MSN, Red Bull, Rolex, Seattle’s Best Coffee, Tracker Boats, Volvo and ZTV. Mercedes by the way is NOT features as the bad guy’s car (as in many other movies) but as the getaway car of our heroes according to BrandCameo which mentions that Mercedes actually thereby “plays the splashiest brand role”.
Right now none of the movies (besides “Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour”) feature any Disney brands popping up - but that can change already in the next week… After all there have been quite a few Disney brands showing up in the top movies in the past, such as EPCOT in Ocean’s Twelve or ESPN in Anger Management, Blades of Glory, Coach Carter, Dodgeball, Driven, Fantastic Four, Just Married, Mean Girls, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby as well as The Game Plan (an alphabetic list of brands with their brandcameos in top boxie office movies can be found on Brandchannel.com as well).
May 28th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Brings back memories of the good old 1982 movie from E.T. that made the Reese’s Pieces America’s favorite Candy. Producers are probably making more from product placements than box office tickets.