angus.todd

Cam Frick wrote a blog that talked about Gordie Dutka’s blog on Product Placement. I always thought product placement was blatant and obvious, somewhat like this farcicle example in the movie ‘Wayne’s World’:

Cam talks about the “Junior Mint” Seinfeld episode as product placement, and this is something I never even noticed. I began to think, if things like this had slipped past me, what else. And I relised that although product placement you do notice is effective, product placement you don’t is even more so. For example, when I think about the movie Transformers, I think about the blatant product placement of the yellow Chevy Camaro, however after doing some digging, I came to realise that there are many other products which ‘happened’ to slip into shots. Ipods, HP computers, Porsche, eBay, USA today, Panasonic, Burger King, Cadillac, Hummers, GM, Apple, Pepto Bysmol, Furbys, Mountain Dew and X-Box 360 all make appearances. Don’t believe me? Take a look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LFQIoc49ZM

But what other products have I been tricked into thinking were cool because of their parts in movies! Were the Herbie movies VolksWagen ads? The scene in ET where the boy leaves a trail of Skittles, Will Smith driving his Auddi TT in IRobot, James Bond’s Aston Martin, the Dr Pepper can Tobey Maguire learns how to shoot webs on in Spiderman, The Fedex plane or the Wilson ball in Castaway… are these all product placements?

Product placement is everywhere, and usually you only see it till you start looking.