Pure Business

During the last lecture of Comm 296 (marketing class), my professor, Tamar talked to us about the product placement promotional strategy. Her example of product placements in movies captured my attention. She talked to us about FedEx appearing in the movie Cast Away and some other examples. These examples made me wonder if there were other product placements in the movies that I’ve seen in the past, so I did some research and came across a very amusing website called Brandchannel.com. In the Brandcameo – films section of this site, “Brandchannel tracks  brand appearances and product placement in each week’s number one film”. This site is amusing in that it is cross-referenced by brands and movies so I can find out all the movies that featured a certain brand or all the brands that appeared in a certain movie.

Here, I found out some brands and product placements that I have never noticed or thought about before while watching the movies. Some of the brands in the films that I’ve seen include Bud Light, Burger King, Sony, Cheerios and more in Paranormal Activity 2; Hummer, Desert Eagle Pistol and more in Resident Evil: Afterlife; Coca-Cola, Mercedes, Range Rover and more in Inception; Cheetos, NBC, Wii and more in Despicable Me; Apple, Barbi, Corvette, eBay, Monopoly, GI Joe and more in Toy Story 3. In this site, I also learned that the leading brand appearances of this year are Ford and Apple.

Next time I watch a film (which will probably be none other than this week’s number one film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1), I will be paying more attention to the appearance of brands. This movie was this week’s tracked film in the Brandcameo section and it tracked Amaretti Del Chiostro, Belstaff, Samsung and Sanyo.

Barbie in Toy Story 3 (left), Desert Eagle Pistol in Resident Evil (right), Wii in Despicable Me (bottom)