Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Product Placements at the Movies -- A Story of Abuse

Muh wife and I braved the elements this weekend to check out the ne flick "In Good Company" starring Dennis Quaid and "One Trick Pony" Topher Grace. I will not be giving a review of this movie on this site -- check out Smokable Clown for that humdinger.

What I want to discuss is the use of product placements. I have seen the blatant use of product placements in television and movies for years now. I get the process. A company such as Apple donates money and props to a production in exchange for free advertising by having its products in a fairly obvious and well scene scenario in the production.

It makes the production money... and I am not against it fundamentally.

However... In Good Company abused the hell out of product placement that it almost detracted from the superb film as a whole.

Off the top of our heads when we got back to the house... muh wife and I quickly tallied the products that were so blatantly obvious in the film.

They included a Diet Coke being used to ice a black eye when no ice was anywhere in the house.

They included the use of a Mastercard at a Target when a purchase needed to be made.

They included an Amstel Light that was actually turned while on the counter and table so the label could be seen inthe shot.

They included a delivery from Domino's Pizza when a tray of baked ziti was dropped and finally they included a scene where the lead and his assistant had a total of three Starbucks coffees in their hands for a four minute scene... not to mention a close up of him chugging the coffee.

That is all we could quickly come up with... I wonder how many more there were... these weren't that obvious...

What is your favorite product placement?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your friend in Flanders wants to know if you if you ever saw the high quality file Josie and the Pussycats, staring the wonderful Parker Posie. You want to talk about product placement, that is the movie for you!

Anonymous said...

Lest we forget the product placement scene in Wayne's world with the Pepsi, Nuprin and Doritos. Oh yes, and Starbucks as the headquarters of Dr. Evil in Austin Powers (II I think). Leave it to Mike Myers!
-Shari