I did a little bit of technical advisory work on the movie Outbreak. I spent a couple of days working on the laboratory sets, making sure they looked scientifically correct. The microscopes used in the film were on loan from Zeiss. After setting up the 'scopes, the Zeiss rep proceeded to practically wallpaper the lab with Zeiss logo stickers without anyone’s permission. I spent over an hour peeling the damn things off reagent bottles, refrigerators, water baths, incubators and cabinets…it appeared that Zeiss made everything put in that lab. Completely pointless action on the rep’s part: Joe Blow movie viewer ain’t gonna know or care who Zeiss is, and those scientists that could bear to sit through that piece of crap movie would be annoyed by all those logos stuck on products Zeiss doesn’t make.
It’s not Apple’s fault if they’re the only folks making computers that actually look good on the screen…
Don’t bother seeing food fight which IIRC, will come out next summer. It takes place in a grocery store, where every night the trademark characters come to life and party at a club. Many of the characters are real brands, such as mr. clean, Charlie the tuna, and the cheetoes cheetah. However, the companies are not paying for the appearences of the products. If any of y’all would like to know more, Greg’s previews (a part of Yahoo’s movie site) has more detail. Personally, it sounds kind of mediocre to me. Maybe it will beat Mac and Me in the product placement game.
DELL’s computers look equally good.
Nobody sticks a Dell on display at the Smithsonian, son. 
Matrix: Reloaded
All of the cars in the freeway chase scene were GM vehicles.
Not a movie but I saw an episode of Sex and the City where one of the plot lines revolved around the fact that the main character (a proud Mac user…) lost her files because she didn’t back them up using ‘a little gizmo called a ZIP DRIVE!!!’.
I seem to remeber that in that episode they kept talking about getting the TRAIN to Philadelphia as well which I believe was being promoted at the time.
I’m not surprised - that whole show is a gigantic product placement though it’s usually for clothes/ shoes/ bags. Still I thought it was particularly blatant in that episode :rolleyes:
The James Bond movies are rife with product placement, but that’s the way it’s supposed to be – even back in the Ian Fleming novels Bond was a brand name-dropper. So most of the time, I don’t mind. What’s really awful is when they’re utterly graceless and blatant with it. In Moonraker, easily one of the worst Bond movies, Bond and the villain have a chase scene that goes past half a dozen billboards. That’s a way to get through a bunch of your product placement at a single shot!
Another movie where it bothered me, believe it or not, was Godzilla 1985. At the time, Dr. Pepper was running a series of ads with a Godzilla clone destroying some city, so somehow they decided it would be a good idea to grab some ad time in the new Godzilla flick. I practically every one of the American-shot scenes (the ones with Raymond Burr, just like in the original Godzilla) there’s a can of Dr. Pepper in your face. Military aides drinking Dr. Pepper in the Situation Room. Dr. Pepper vending machines in the hallway, etc.
My choice for the best product placement is Return of the Killer Tomatoes, a much under-rated film (despite having George Clooney). I was going to bring this up even before Max Torque mentioned it, but I think he’s wrong. R)TKT is a parody of product placement. Halfway through the film they announce that they ran out of money, and for the rest of the flick they’re pushing products left and right, with no subtlety at all. But it’s deliberate, of course.
OK, this isn’t technically a product placement but it did jar me out of my movie-enjoyment state.
It was Lethal Weapon III (or IV ), I’m not sure. Anyway, I’m following happily along with the mindless action and then comes a scene in the police department. Behind Mel Gibson is a HUGE poster on the wall for some sort of gun control - I don’t remember what it specifically said other than “Get guns off our streets!!!” or something. The scene continues and these posters are EVERYWHERE! In a police department!!
Come on, director of mindless fluff, don’t you think you’re taking yourself a LITTLE too seriously? Or is this your way of salving your conscience after putting 90 minutes of explosions up on the screen? I don’t CARE about your political views - I came to be entertained!
In any case, it was a jolting, jarring, forget the storyline experience for me. I spent the rest of the movie waiting for more things like this to pop up, instead of follwing the (admittedly very weak) plot.
OK, this goes way back – 1967 as a matter of fact. Basically product placement did not exist yet, but Frank Sinatra was in a film called Tony Rome and it so happens that Frank Sinatra also had quite a few shares of Budwiser.
Since before this film there was virtually no product placement it stuck out so badly at the time. There were things like beer signs carefully placed over bartenders’ shoulders and the like, but the thing that really struck me was that twice (not once, but twice mind you) two people were drinking cans of Bud while facing each other in such a way the cans’ labels were perfectly framed and clear in their hands (not to mention in the center of the screen). I have tried it since and it is almost impossible to do once much less have it happen four times (you have to almost hold it with your finger tips).
I wonder: can a company pay for its competitors to have bad product placement? Say that the script calls for some guy to drink from a soft drink bottle that’s been poisoned, and then immediately fall over dead. Can Coca-Cola pay to make sure that the lethal beverage is a Pepsi?
I think the lawyers would be all over the script with Magic Markers™ at that point.
More votes for
Happy Gilmour… all that Subway shilling really pissed me off.
Mac and Me… didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the movie, as I wouldn’t have enjoyed it anyway.
Chevy had a subtle dig at Ford in Live and Let Die. There’s a scene where Bond is in NYC riding along the freeway, when a baddie shoots his driver with a dart. Chevy had obviously paid for the cars in this one, but this scene in particular is hilarious. EVERY car on the freeway is the same year Chevy Impala, including Bond’s driverless car. As he gets his car under control, it finally crashes…into the only Ford in the entire movie, an Econoline van.
TV time, IIRC they were drinking older cans that used the key to open them, not pop tops, so it would’ve been slightly easier to get the label showing correctly…
Maybe not ruin-the-movie bad, but I’m in the middle of watching Manhunter for the first time, and just found one particular scene a little jarring. Agent Graham is just talking to his young son, first the first time, about why he had to spend some time the psychiatric wing:
Then we see a shot of the father’s arm reassuringly around his eleven-year-old’s shoulder, as the kid looks up into his (off-screen) eyes. More than three-quarters of the shot is dedicated to stacks of various-sized containers of Folger’s instant-coffee crystals. Nothing like adding a commercial message as a coda to a serious father/son scene. Ick.
Now that you mention it, during most of the time Graham was talking about all the negative stuff, Maxwell House coffee was in the shot. Maybe enough of a subtle negative association to be safe from litigation. “What? The scene takes place in a store.”
Oh, I know, I meant my post in a tongue-in-cheek way. The best bits are the Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box that fills half the screen for about five minutes, and the ATVs. Shortly after the plug for the ATVs, as I recall, the characters ask the director if they have enough money to finish the movie yet. The camera pans over, and we see the director and crew lounging in a hot tub drinking champagne and cavorting with bikini-clad women. hehe.
Re: the Macs in every damn show and movie.
I’ve been wondering about the logo on the powerbook. Seems to me, they have powerbooks specifically made for use on screen, with the logo upside down, so when the lid is opened, and the powerbook shown from behind, so to say, the apple is still facing the right way.
With a normal powerbokk, with the lid opened, the logo would be upside down, no?
I didn’t see the movie What Women Want (if that’s the right title) – the movie where Mel Gibson gains the ability to hear women’s thoughts, and uses this power to make more effective advertisements. I heard that a large part of the movie is dedicated to the creation of a Nike commercial.
Thank you! I feel like no one else gets this. The whole point of the movie was advertisements! Gahhh! God I hate that movie.
And I, for one, have no problem seeing Macs on-screen.
How can no one have mentioned that ridiculous Duracell battery in The Matrix?