I reckon if a product placement calls attention to itself, then it makes moviegoers groan and say (silently) "I paid for a goddamn movie, not a commercial!" Apparently, brandchannel.com couldn't care less. They base their Brandcameo Award on the number of cinematic product placements in number one ranked movies (1251 brands counted in total). "Ford— for the third straight time— topped all other brands, appearing in 30 of the 52 number one films at the US box office from January 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008. Ford’s 57.7 percent appearance rate in top films is a marked increase over its 18 of 41 appearances in 2005 (44 percent) and 17 of 41 in 2006 (41 percent)." (FYI: Transformers, Bucket List, I Am Legend, American Gangster and taxis aplenty). Unfortunately, the man responsible for all this screen time, Mark Kaline, was written out of Ford's script. Or perhaps he's just in development Hell.
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You ever watch Burn notice? It’s nearly a GM infomercial. Plenty of hot cars (mostly Caddys) shot so that the badge is gets some loving screen time. Car brands thrown into dialogue. They do tons of maintenance or waxing. Sometimes a secondary character gets to drive a Ford product for a few minutes.
I like the show enough to forgive the product placement, but its the most blatant I’ve scene.
This is news?
Watch the opening and closing credits of later Leave it to Beaver episodes. Think it was a coincidence that the Cleaver family piled into a brand-new Plymouth Fury during the opening credits? Or that the Fury was replaced with a new model for each season (guess Ward did well enough at the office to afford a brand-new Plymouth every year)?
Or that during the closing credits a 1959 DeSoto just happens to be driving by while Wally and the Beav are walking down the street?
For that matter, the old Twilight Zone may have happened in another dimension, but it was apparently a dimension where the Ford Motor Company controlled 100 percent of the new-car market.
On The Beverly Hillbillies, Miss Jane Hathaway may have been an underpaid secretary, but mean old Mr. Drysdale paid her enough for her to buy a brand-new Dodge Coronet convertible every year.
I enjoy Burn Notice – it caught me and I’m addicted. Sam the FBI guy used to drive an older Neon in the beginning until his girlfriend gave him the CTS (v6). Now he sports a Buick Hearse thing after his sugar momma dumped him. Fi gets a Saab and likely skin cancer looking how tan she is. Michael drives some older muscle car – never really studied it to find out what model – I thought it was a Challenger (Dodge).
If you want to see blatant car ads in movies watch Matrix Revolution (and the highway chase scene – I’ve never seen so many GM’s with little other makes except at a rental car lot). Or Transformers where GM’s are the good guys – do they all come complete with the GM silver badge thing?
My favorite Ford product placement moment was the scene in the horrifyingly bad Knight Rider movie where KITT has a headon collision with a large GM SUV (Yukon?) and completely demolishes it.
Money well spent Ford, money well spent.
When I first saw Transfor…er…Bayformers I wondered how does Jazz (one of the good Transformers) go from a Martini 935 Porsche race car (in the original cartoon) to a Pontiac Solstice!
Then I remembered: its been directed by Michael Bay.
“Well, this sort of thing can’t get worse!” I thought. Then I saw the new Knight Rider. Do GM and Ford think we’re stupid?
Maybe its wish-fulfillment. I’m sure all three of ’em would love a world all to themselves.
Movies have nothing on TV shows, in terms of shamelessness. First two that come to mind:
Last Comic Standing (Honda)
American Idol (Ford)
You ever watch Burn notice? It’s nearly a GM infomercial. Plenty of hot cars (mostly Caddys) shot so that the badge is gets some loving screen time. Car brands thrown into dialogue. They do tons of maintenance or waxing. Sometimes a secondary character gets to drive a Ford product for a few minutes.
I like the show enough to forgive the product placement, but its the most blatant I’ve scene.
You mean it’s not more blatant than the first season of ‘Heroes’ where Masi Oka (Hiro) mentioned “Nee-san Versa” in every other episode?
Heh, ok. Well I did qualify it by what I’ve seen (see, I can spell it right). That sounds awful though, you may have Burn Notice beat. At least you can write off the product placement in Burn Notice as characters who just really enjoy American cars.
What is this??
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080820/COL14/80820047
I wonder if Chrysler did its product placement for ‘The Office’ or if the Chrysler Sebring that ‘Michael Scott’ drove was just coincidence. He is now driving a PT Cruiser. The cars are actually mentioned by their brand names by both ‘Dwight K Schrute’ and ‘Michael Scott’. Suffice to say, I think it would have a negative impact because who would want to seen in the same car Michael Scott drives?
I’m still pissed over Knight Rider. KITT is supposed to be a third-gen Trans Am, not a Mustang! As Hank Hill would say, that boy ain’t right!
I never understood TV/movie product placements for cars. Seriously, I want some statistics showing any signifigant bump in auto purchases that were actually inspired by seeing a car in a movie recently.
Anyone here buy a CTS because of Matrix Reloaded?
I’m actually not surprised to see this as nearly all American action flicks involve a Ford Crown Vic in police (as the Interceptor), or taxi livery (except for the GM-dominated “dream world” of the Matrix Trilogy; and even then, there’s a classic Lincoln Continental shown prominently in the first movie).
As someone who used to really like GM products until I realized that they spent more time in the shop than in my driveway, I almost walked out of Transformers.
That was absolutely sickening. Jazz’s change to a Pontiac (!) was bad enough. Nixing Bumblebee’s Beetle in favor of a freaking CAMARO, however, was just insulting. I don’t understand it as a product placement: anyone who’s likely to notice would be equally likely to be irritated.
The GM trucks, of course, I could understand…there’s plenty of them sitting unmolested on dealer lots for alien robots to inspect. Nope, nooooobody bothering them. Especially not customers.
If the robots had REALLY wanted to blend in, they should all have disguised themselves as Camries.
@billc83:
Seriously, I want some statistics showing any signifigant bump in auto purchases that were actually inspired by seeing a car in a movie recently.
It’s hit or miss. The original Knight Rider TV series probably sold more than a few black Trans Ams, as did the movie, Smokey and the Bandit. I also recall a few middle-aged women in the early 1980s who referred to their BMW 6-series as a “Mattie Hayes coupe” (from Moonlighting).
But overall, does it make a difference? Probably not. Non-car people don’t notice the product placements, and car people get annoyed at watching a movie or show that is set in a world where all of the vehicles are made by a single manufacturer…such as Bewitched, where you only saw Chevrolets and an occasional car from another GM division. Or the Andy Griffith Show, where the only non-Ford vehicles were the ones having car trouble, or being worked on at the service station by Goober, Gomer or Wally.
The weirdest product placement movie I’ve ever seen has to be Tremors 3, which featured every kind of Explorer ever manufactured and even Ford news vans. It was truly bizarre.
Considering the budget of that movie, however, I don’t think it was so much a “let’s sponsor this movie” deal as a “i’m the director and my brother owns a ford dealership” deal.
Man, you guys must be new! Don’t you remember the good old days where every, and I mean *every*, Quinn Martin Production was sponsored by Ford? The Rockford Files continuity errors when dear old Jim was about to trash the Firebird it would change into an older model?
This is as old as TV. And even older in the movies and just as blatant back then as now. At least with the clip there was some justification: in the original, Heston drove a Mach 1.
Logically though it doesn’t make a bit of sense; at the end of the world most gas would evaporate and you definitely wouldn’t be driving something with an overly complex supercharger on it. Something like a Cummins would work just fine tho.