Month: September 2010

The above picture is a fabrication of what I’m going to be talking about today, but it still gets the point across. A huge avenue for marketing (and specifically advertising) that many of us probably don’t realize even exists is in Hollywood blockbuster movies. I can just about guarantee that the next movie you watch will have some sort of discrete, or even in your face, product placements.

One example I want to draw on is the movie “Cellular” (Check it out on imdb – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337921/). Basically the movie is about this young fraternity type guy who gets a random phone call from a woman in distress, and he spends the movie trying to stay on the line with her while informing the police about the crime, etc. This movie is the spokesperson for Nokia. I swear that almost every 5 seconds you will see the Nokia brand name, or at least see someone with a phone in their pocket, hand, etc. Of course the makers of the movie probably didn’t care there was so many product plugs, because Nokia most likely had to pay huge amounts to get the whole movie all about them.

The above is sort of an extreme case of product plugs in movies. Other common ones include Coke and McDonalds billboards in Times Square.

This picture of Times Square is the kind of example that I actually really like. Its very subtle and yet effective. The viewer may just perceive a typical night scene of downtown New York City, but subconsciously they are internalizing that the feelings associated with this scene should most likely go with the recognizable logos. So for example, if there is an epic romantic ending of a movie in Times Square with a Coke logo in the background, the viewer is more likely to attribute the warm fuzzy feelings of the scene with Coke.

On a last note I wanted to show this Youtube video. Its from the show “Whose Line is It Anyway”. Watch at least the first minute and you’ll get the gist of what I was ranting about.

“Introducing Lite – the new way to spell ‘Light’, but with twenty percent fewer letters.” – Jerry Seinfeld

A side note – this blog has been created for my Marketing 296 class.

Another note – I’ve never been very good at keeping journals, memos, etc.

With that aside, I will begin by saying an unoriginal ‘hello’ to the global internet community. I hope some bored student out there who is supposed to be researching or studying or something will come across my blog and get annoyed, because there probably is not much value in reading my rants.

Basically in my first blog I just wanted to say that I got stung by a bee on my middle finger of my right hand yesterday. My hand is now slightly swollen and I don’t like looking at it because it reminds me of Hansel and Gretel for some strange reason. I havn’t been stung by a bee in probably 5 years. I think it was just innocently landing on my hand, and I thought it was a pesky fly, so therefore it got annoyed and stung me. Or maybe it was just karma for wearing a sunny-yellow shirt on a cloudy day.

Anyways, that is the one semi-interesting random story I have to share for now. Besides that everything is pretty standard. I hope everyone has an excellent weekend and gets at least one productive thing done…. and then be lazy for the rest of the time.

“What a kid I got, I told him about the birds and the bees and he told me about the butcher and my wife.”   – Rodney Dangerfield