Movie? or Commerical?

November 17, 2010 • 6:44 pm • POSTED BY swortoncross

On a random Monday night in November I got together with a bunch of my friends to have dinner and watch a movie. The movie we chose is based off a beloved television series and has quite the following. Other than the fact that the movie was horrifyingly bad, the overt use of product placements was something other than good. Even my friends who are not in agency world also commented on the frequency and blatant use of the brands featured. When did it become acceptable to turn a movie or television show into a commercial? Well… some time during the 1980s. The Marx Brothers were the first to feature brands prominently in their movie, Love Happy, and in the 1980s it became main-stream.

I am a big fan of great count down list; check it out, “The Top 10 Egregious Product Placements in Film.” What I love about this list is that it features great movies; even dare I say beloved movies that we have grown up with. I am a personal fan of Up in the Air and E.T. and if you twist my arm I will even say You’ve Got Mail. Producers just needed money, and so they leaned on advertisers to help them cut down on expenses, but at what cost is this to the audiences viewing pleasure? Is the movie ruined due to this practice? As a member of the advertising world, I feel that I should be a big fan of product placement in movies, television, and other media. But I’m also of the theory that it should marry up properly with the story, and that subtle route would preferable.

If you have not seen the music video for Lady Gaga’s song, “Telephone” you are in for a treat! Well, maybe not if you are not a fan of Gaga, but you are in for a bombardment of an impressive but rather obnoxious number of brands that are captured in the music video. However, over-the-top as it is, advertisers were actually smart to showcase their brands in her music video.  According to an article in Advertising Age, “Product placement spending on recorded music grew nearly 10% in 2009 and accounted for about 15% to 20% of the $103 million in spending classified as “other media,” a category that also includes newspapers, books, magazines and radio.”

I thought I would just finish up with another list. Try to avoid the following shows if you are not a fan of product placement. I may or may not be a fan of the show “Dancing with the Stars.”
Advertising Age – 11.03.10