Logan drinking Dr Pepper in X-Men 2–duly chilled by Bobby–was such a blatant product plug that it jolted me out of the suspensed reality state required to enjoy an action movie. Later driving Mazda’s new RX-8 (available now! go buy it!) was almost as bad.
If it’s done in a subtle way, product placement is an excellent tool for instant characterization.
The character that smokes Camel Longs, for instance, is very different from someone who asks for a pack of Virginia Slims or Kools. A character who goes into a bar and orders a strange, imported beer by name—while everyone else is ordering Budweiser—stands out from the crowd. A character who drives an AMC Gremlin… well, you get the idea.
The trouble that I have with product placement is that very little of it has to do with character or plot.
“Why don’t you show the hero enjoying an ice-cold Coke!”
“What does that say about his character?”
“Well, Coke is the leading brand.”
“But he’s supposed to be a rebel who doesn’t follow the rules.”
“Coke has that rebellious spirit. You know, for the young at heart.”
“But he’s an embittered middle-aged man.”
“Coke is an American classic! Perfect for all ages!”
“In other words, your product has nothing to say about my character at all.”
“Not really, no. I was deliberately wasting your time.”
The really big brands that often get product placements, those are the brands that say little or nothing about the actual character. In all truthfulness, what does a hero driving a Ford say that a hero driving a Chevy doesn’t? Nothing. But a hero who drives a VW Beetle… at least that’s distinctive.
In fact, in The Whole Nine Yards, Rosanna Arquette’s character drives a Beetle. Volkwagon offered the filmmakers some money for product placement but only if Matthew Perry’s character owned/drove the car.
“That’s not his character,” the filmmakers said. “He wouldn’t drive that. She would.”
“We’re not going to pay you for yet another 35-year-old woman to drive our product. We’ve got that market well covered. He drives the car, or we don’t pay.” (Paraphrased from director Jonathan Lynn’s DVD commentary.)
It’s all very cynical, of course. Every time I see product placement I question whether it’s good for the story, when I should be thinking about the movie.
A couple of side notes here, I think Norman Lear’s soap, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman was the first television show to use actual products as props. They weren’t so much paid advertisements but I think were used to make the show seem more real, if that’s possible to make that show seem real. In one of the very first episodes, even though there had been a family murdered in the neighborhood (not to mention the goats and chickens), Mary was more concerned about the “yellow waxy buildup” on her floor.
I remember that The Beverly Hillbillies did commercials for Kelloggs Corn Flakes. But watching the reruns, I noticed that the actual show used a doctored cereal box, with the Kelloggs rooster but a generic “Corn Flakes” label.
While deliberate and gratuitous product placement can be annoying, I find that the opposite can be equally true.
The example I have in mind is the movie Clerks, where ,repeatedly throughout the entire movie(which takes place in a minimart) people ask for “a pack of cigarettes”. Not Winstons, not Camels, nor any specific brand name.
I realize the director was working on an extreme budget and couldn’t afford the legal permission to use thos names, but given that the movie is done in almost a documentary style, this big fat dose of Non-realism is very jarring in the context of the movie
Chris W
Actually, the only reason I went to see the movie was because of the Minis 