The Greatest Movie Ever Sold: Movie Trailer

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. There are so many reasons why I love the look of this movie, not least:

• Super Size Me legend, Morgan Spurlock is fronting it. Guaranteed, good honest humour whilst proving a salient, sobering point along the way
• It is completely self-referential – a film proving its own point that we are over-advertised to through the medium of film and television, whilst acknowledging it wouldn’t exist without that very industry. I just love a good old paradox
• By the look of the movie posters, he actually manages to convince Californian-based pomegranate juice-makers POM Wonderful to take the $1m title sponsorship. I cannot wait to see that boardroom table discussion
• The issue of our contemporary over-dosing on product placement is placed front and centre (anyone who doubts the presence of brands in movies needs to check out Brand Channel‘s great database, Brand Cameo)
• Great title (though he will need to be forgiven for borrowing from Frank Rich’s book of the same name)

The premise is a simple one – can you make a movie using only budget acquired from sponsors and advertisers? If you’re wondering how Spurlock came up with the idea in the first place, his director’s statement in the movie’s press pack is worth a read.

(and no fewer than 12 pages of the 23-page press pack are dedicated to ‘A word from our sponsors’. So it’s a fair that bet he accomplished what he set out to…)

I think my favourite exchange in the trailer below, is from Spurlock’s conversation with politician Ralph Nader:

Spurlock: Where should I be able to go where I don’t see one bit of advertising?

[beat]

Nader: To sleep.

Not currently slated for a UK theatrical release this year, this might be one for festival screenings and a smaller-scale art-house release. But for the time being watch the trailer and enjoy:

 

Wall Street 2: Product Placement Never Sleeps

I went along to a preview of the Wall Street sequel last night. Enjoyable, certainly, but as ever (brand geek that I am) I was on the look out for product placement and my word was there a lot to choose from.

While Brand Cameo provides a very nice summary of all the brands who got screen time, I thought it would be more interesting to visually display which ones had the biggest impact on me. So I created a Wordle to represent them:

Now I’m not saying this is based on the average consumer, because I am a brand-obsessed marketer who was actively looking out for them. But I’ve created this based on the impact each brand left me with.

Of the 33 brands present on the screen, I managed unprompted recall of 7 – Bulgari, Heineken, Johnnie Walker (Blue), Lay’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Toyota and Ducati. Another two that, on being prompted, I felt also had a prominent role were Border’s and Cracker Jack (the latter of which got a verbal reference, a minor plot-line and on-screen package presence).

In terms of credibility? The Heineken reference was absurd: in a restaurant setting, Gekko (Michael Douglas) offers Jake (Shia LeBeouf) a drink and instead of the more natural ‘Can I get you a beer?’, he offers the specific branded lager (which LeBeouf accepts), showing an unusual prior knowledge of drinks taste for an exchange between relative strangers.

(c) Twentieth Century Fox

Bulgari has a natural narrative placement in one storyline, but there is an additional black tie fundraiser scene where half the screen time is taken up with scene-setting shots focused tightly on the bejewelled ears and necks of all the female guests – no doubt who were all dressed by the luxury jeweller. Slightly gratuitous.

Ducati absolutely has a natural fit in one section of the movie, and the branding doesn’t feel overdone. Toyota more or less serves a purpose, but had no specific plotline supporting its involvement (unlike Ducati) – appearance-wise it looks like an odd choice of model for the protagonists (not the best-looking car), but on further probing I gather it is a Toyota Prius. It is the ‘lefty’[sic] Winnie (Carey Mulligan) who we see driving it (implication being it is hers rather than Jake’s) so I guess, given the Prius’s über-green credentials, it actually seems a pretty good character fit.

Other brands appear just for screen time: Dunkin’ Donuts and Lay’s being two. The offer of a Johnnie Walker Blue from Jake to his Japanese clients as a gift is a bit over-sold but more or less believable (though I remain unconvinced you would refer to the brand by name on presentation of the bottle).

The nicest brand reference is probably Cracker Jack (another Frito Lay brand) – I won’t expand too much for fear of plot-spoilers ahead of release – but their presence in the movie is believable, fits with the narrative and isn’t over-sold.

What really interests me is how much the average movie-goer would have picked up from all of these. If there’s anyone reading this who doesn’t lamely watch movies for the brand mentions, please do leave your comments below.

90210′s product placement horrors

TV product placement in its various incarnations is something that I love to keep track of. We see it with the greatest presence (and price tag) on the silver screen, but we are starting to see it more and more on the small screen too – especially in American shows targeted at a youth audience. Unfortunately, the more common it becomes, the less sophisticated the methods seem to be.

Granted, the US have very different rules on brand presence, but with the recent return of 90210 to E4, I needed to share some screen grabs of a couple of season 1 episodes where the product placement is nothing short of paid-for full-screen advertising (and thus I have tagged this post appropriately).

I love the show and I don’t usually find this kind of over-exposure offensive as such, but 90210′s integration of brand into scene is so unsubtle that it is starting to become intrusive even for me. The two prime examples (taken from the previous, first, season) are Dr.Pepper and T-Mobile’s Sidekick mobile phone.

So you could watch the clips in the context of the show, I had found the clips on YouTube, but as is increasingly the way these things go, the clips in question have been removed by a CBS copyright claims. A shame, but if you are studying product placement methods (and the clangers therein) it is almost worth buying season 1 just to spot them (I’m sure you will find more).

Dr. Pepper makes its first appearance behind the bar (and front of shot ON the bar too)...

...and gets prime placement for the close-up

It even (bizarrely) gets wall placement in the cafe to cover the reverse camera angle and (even more bizarrely) gets a reversed placement on the bar in the foreground

Naomi got so over-excited at receiving a message on her T-Mobile Sidekick that she had to taunt Annie with it...

...and the producers felt the need for the obligatory close-up

Can anyone NOT read the vertical T-Mobile branding? Well fear not, if you are blind, Naomi gives it a verbal mention too.

All that said, while I still won’t touch Dr.Pepper because it remains vile-tasting no matter how much screen time Hollywood gives it, I do now quite want a Sidekick. And I did write this blog post about it. Go figure. Maybe we can learn from the Americans yet.

Landmark decision to lift ban on television product placement

I have been meaning to post on the product placement horrors in one of my fave US teen dramas 90210 for some time, and that post is still forthcoming – but in the meantime, a quick update on recent developments in that area for the UK broadcast market.

Ever in the shadow of its more commercially open American cousin, the British broadcasting industry has always been hampered by government guidelines restricting product placement on our TV screens. Not for much longer.

Under new legislation announced by the Government on 9 February, product placement will be allowed in UK terrestrial television programmes. In his statement, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Ben Bradshaw said that maintaining a ban on television product placement would “jeopardise the competitiveness” of UK programme makers “at a time when this crucial part of our creative industries needs all the help we can give it.”

This decision follows the introduction of the Audiovisual Media Regulations 2009 on 19 December 2009, which allowed some product placement in ‘on-demand’ television and television-like services.  However, until this week’s Government announcement, there were no exceptions to the prohibition on television product placement. The question of television product placement has proved a contentious issue, with many stakeholders expressing concerns about the potential adverse impact on the editorial independence of broadcasters and on viewers’ trust in what they see on television. The strength of opinion is evident in that the Government received almost 1480 responses during its recent consultation.

For this reason, the Government has decided to “proceed with caution” and has decided to introduce further safeguards beyond those set out in the AVMS Regulations 2009. Products and services such as alcohol, food and drinks high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS), infant follow-on milk and gambling will all be excluded from the new product placement rules, and BBC licence funded programmes will also remain unaffected.

Further, it is significant that the new rules will not take effect immediately, as the Government want to give Ofcom the opportunity to run a public consultation and make detailed changes to its Code. However, it is anticipated that shows including product placement will be being shown on terrestrial TV by the end of the year, in what could herald a new era for television advertising and broadcasting.

Watch out for a pint of the black stuff being ordered in the Old Vic this side of Christmas.