Movies, advertising & product placements

At 07:44 PM 09/26/2005 -0400, Marilyn Matty wrote:

Unless you're seeing very independent or student productions, few movies in distribution in the last few decades are free of product placements

This is getting pretty far off topic, but ...

I don't doubt for a moment that there's a very strong negative correlation between product placements in a movie and my watching the movie. Yes, I tend to go for independent movies.

The two movies I saw last week were March of the Penguins and Broken Flowers. Definitely no product placements in Penguins, not unless someone is paying to have generic ice shown.

Might have been a placement for MapQuest in Flowers -- they showed printed pages with MapQuest clearly shown, also credits saying "used by permission of MapQuest" -- I don't know whether this is how placements are credited. Could have been placements for Ford or Porsche, though I'm skeptical as to how much an auto maker would pay when the payoff line is "why didn't you reserve me a car I can drive, like a Porsche -- I'm a stalker in a Taurus". The Taurus is shown frequently though. Assuming that's what the car really is, I don't know. A computer was shown briefly, but I'm pretty sure there were no identifiable logos.

There, I've laid bare my taste in movies ...

Edward Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

On Sep 26, 2005, at 9:12 PM, Edward Reid wrote:

> The two movies I saw last week were March of the Penguins and
> Broken Flowers. Definitely no product placements in Penguins, not
> unless someone is paying to have generic ice shown.

An interesting aside about "March of the Penguins," which I thought
was terrific. The movie itself was carefully re-crafted to appeal to
US audiences, though they did not anticipate it would be quite the
theatrical hit it has become. The voice over is totally different
from the original French version, which used a lot of dialogue
between the penguins and was light on narration. The original is
supposed to be very schmaltzy

One of the reasons Morgan Freeman was chosen is because his voice is
familiar to US audiences not just because of his acting, but also
because he's done quite a bit of voice overs in commercials over the
years.

>
> Might have been a placement for MapQuest in Flowers -- they showed
> printed pages with MapQuest clearly shown, also credits saying
> "used by permission of MapQuest" -- I don't know whether this is
> how placements are credited.

Placements can happen in any number of ways - anything from being
sold in a similar manner to traditional advertising sales to someone
greasing the palms of the prop or production people.

There are no restraints on crediting product placements in films.
Often the participating companies are given credits, but this is
usually not the case. To the vast majority of the audience, the on
screen time that products seem to just happen to be in the film.
Sometimes they are - there's a famous case of a producer dressing
Eddie Murphy a t-shirt from his high school out of school loyalty,
and this plug ended up in tens of thousands of dollars in t-shirt
sales for a struggling school in a poor neighborhood that really
needed the money.

After the quiz show scandals of the 1950's-60's, product placement in
television shows were very strictly regulated until Ronald Reagan,
who was once the head of the actor's union, was elected US President.
He considerably loosened the restrictions.

A lot of column inches in the ad press has been devoted to Martha
Stewart's new "Apprentice" show, which sold a big placement in the
first episode to her book publisher, Random House, who used it to
target moms with young kids. The first assignment for the apprentices
was to create children's books.

> Could have been placements for Ford or Porsche, though I'm
> skeptical as to how much an auto maker would pay when the payoff
> line is "why didn't you reserve me a car I can drive, like a
> Porsche -- I'm a stalker in a Taurus". The Taurus is shown
> frequently though. Assuming that's what the car really is, I don't
> know. A computer was shown briefly, but I'm pretty sure there were
> no identifiable logos.

This is definitely a product placement, and they can say anything
they want in films. Car placements are one of the top categories in
the field. Placements for the cars in stunts are usually a different
arrangement, as the car company usually will donate lots of cars they
know will be destroyed in filming the stunts.

The James Bond/BMW product arrangement, which features placements in
the film as well as print, video and cinema ads, promotions, posters,
etc. is one of the longest standing and profitable ones.

>
> There, I've laid bare my taste in movies ...

And me in movies and advertising.

Marilyn

On Sep 28, 2005, at 2:30 PM, Marilyn Matty wrote:

A lot of column inches in the ad press has been devoted to Martha Stewart's new "Apprentice" show, which sold a big placement in the first episode to her book publisher, Random House, who used it to target moms with young kids. The first assignment for the apprentices was to create children's books.

For anyone interested... I just read in a recent issue of Adweek that General Motors paid $2 million for a Buick placement in an upcoming episode of Martha Stewart's "Apprentice," which does not include the charge for a required ad buy that must go along with it. Kraft, General Motors, Delta/Song Airlines have also committed.

The article also mentioned that a placement on "Survivor" costs $12 million. Though the article didn't mention the cost of placements on "Desperate Housewives," it said the placements are limited to 3 per episode, and there's a waiting list of 250 advertisers for future opportunities.

Revenues for product placements for network TV for 2005 are anticipated to be about $2 billion. Overall commercial spending in 2004 was $54 billion.

Marilyn

On Sep 28, 2005, at 11:30 AM, mmatty (by way of Andrew Laurence) wrote:

> Commercials in movie theaters are at the discretion of the theater
> owner - they're paid for them, as they are for the posters, the ads
> on cups, popcorn bags, counter cards, ceiling danglers, etc.

The curtain in the Rose Theatre in Port Townsend is covered with ads.

However, I don't think Rocky is getting paid for them, as they are
real ads from some 80 or 90 years ago (Port Townsend had 2 digit
phone numbers at the time of at least some of them).

They are rather fun to peruse whilst awaiting the pre-movie trailers
(why do "trailers" come before the feature...is the industry really
backing up all the time?).

   --John

On Sep 28, 2005, at 11:30 AM, edward wrote:

> The two movies I saw last week were March of the Penguins and Broken
> Flowers. Definitely no product placements in Penguins,

Linux and the TidBITS empire collaborated on the placements. ;-)

   --John

The BBC recently got in trouble for showing an Apple logo in an episode of "Spooks", as product placement is illegal in the UK:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/bulletins/br/article/518896/bbc-removes-apple-logo-spooks-amid-product-placement-furore/

Personally, I loved this article because it means they've created a new season of one of my favorite TV shows: in the US, it's broadcast on BBC America as "MI-5". :-)

Jeff

On 10/3/05, Jeff Carlson <jeffctidbits.com> wrote:
> The BBC recently got in trouble for showing an Apple logo in an episode of
> "Spooks", as product placement is illegal in the UK:

Interesting as the Spooks team has always used Macs, quite obviously
so. I mean, ACDs and G5s littered the place like, well, litter.

> Personally, I loved this article because it means they've created a new
> season of one of my favorite TV shows: in the US, it's broadcast on BBC
> America as "MI-5". :-)

I watched one ep of MI-5 (Sereis 1 Ep 1) and it was 42 minutes long
instead of 58 minutes long. I never watched it again as the tension
of the show was completely destroyed by the cutting for commercial TV.

I dunno if I can watch after the last series (dunno if S3 has been
shown in the US, so I'll not comment further).

BTW, in the UK what we call "Seasons" they call "series"<1>, probably
because the schedules are not tied to particular times of year. Or
even consecutive years. The first series of Fawlty Towers preceded
the second series by something like 9 years.

<1> and what we call Series they call programmes

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