My wife and I took our daughters, 10 and 6 (that's their ages, not their names) to the movies tonight. We saw Tim Allen's "The Shaggy Dog."
About five minutes into the movie, I notice something: Product Placements. Lots of them. Lots and lots and lots of product placements in the movie, a Disney production aimed at pre-teens.
Here are just some of the products I saw (I wrote them on the movie ticket stub as I saw them):
- Ford
- Porsche
- Special K cereal (this was a big one...three big screen shots, so much so that it was drilled into me that their cereal was the "Low Carb" cereal.
- Dodge
- Hewlett Packard
- the singer Nora Jones' new CD
It's all about sales leads. Big mega-companies get them through expensive product placement at the movies. Does it work? Well, they keep doing it...
It's clever and funny at the same time isn't it. One minute you're watching a movie and then all of a sudden reference to a brand or product appears! Everything is becoming commercialized, but I think people will prefer product placement as opposed to commercials because it doesn't interrupt the actual program or film! As clever as it is, and as innovative as product placement has gotten, I wonder if we'll see anybody in films or shows talking about insurance and insurance companies? I mean, it's hard enough getting normal people talking about insurance in daily life. Maybe Hollywood could encourage people to do so! I mean, there's so much potential - particularly back in the 70's with all the disaster films!
Posted by: Michaela Roberts | February 1, 2007 11:33 PM | Permalink to Comment