Monday, July 25, 2011

Leave Product Placement to the Pros

Say what you want about director Michael Bay, but the guy knows how to film beautiful women surrounded by exploding machinery in slow-motion. He also is an experienced pro at product placement. You may have not even noticed the amount of products you were being sold while you were seeing his movies.

Case in point:



Parts: The Clonus Horror. . .er. . .I mean The Island actually set a record in 2005 by having 35 individual products or brands prominently featured in the film. Now we know how Michael Bay gets his funding.

However, some people aren't as skilled at the art of subliminal advertising as Mr. Bay. Take, for example, this clip from Days of Our Lives which was sent into me by, alert reader, Mitch. Try and figure out what snack food sponsored their programming that week:



Wow. That was. . .subtle, Alison.

Back to Bay. This time, in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, he one-upped himself and managed to get 47 brands mashed into one film. That film currently holds the record for highest number of paid product placements. See how many brand names you can spot in the following montage:



And now back to Days of Our Lives:



. . .and scene.

Moral of the story: Sloppy and obvious product placement isn't effective and it just makes you look stupid.

Now, if you'll excuse me, for some reason I suddenly feel like buying stuff I don't need.

3 comments:

Small Town Shelly Brown said...

Ummm, wow! Those DooL placements were awful!

I remember the first time I noticed product placement (and had a name for it) was that Mel Gibson movie Forever Young. I think it was pepsi (or coke) and Nikes (or Reeboks.) I just remember thinking. Why do we keep seeing these?

But I think the earliest product placement in my memory is ET.

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Bethany said...

Apparently, Alison loves shows with obvious and annoying product placement. Geesh!

Michael Bay definitely does a better job at it, but that's still a ton!

The Former 786 said...

Your memory serves you correctly, Shelly Brown, while product placement has been a part of movies since the 1920s, it didn't become a mainstream practice until E.T. So, while Michael Bay gets a lot of the blame, Steven Spielberg had a hand in it, too.

And I agree with you, Bethany. The advertisements in the middle of The Biggest Loser are amazingly annoying. That's one of the reasons I stopped watching it. That and it made me feel guilty for not working out. :)