Product Placement in Movies

Moving away from politics, one constant source of amusement for me is product placement in movies.  I’m kind of a movie freak, and product placement has really become a big thing in movies.  See Iron Man, where everyone drives an Audi, uses a Dell, places phone calls with Motorola, I think, and wants Burger King after they’ve been kidnapped by terrorists.  Since that isn’t on DVD yet, here is an example I remember smirking at way back in the halcyon days of whenever the hell I saw it:

I’m actually a little mixed on product placement altogether.  Most movies that don’t have product placement wind up with some tortured, obvious stand-in for a real product.  I vaguely recall an X-Files episode where someone was holding a pack of cigarettes with the Marlboro design and font, but was labeled “Marly.”  It really makes no difference to me what the label is, and it’s no less distracting to see fake logos than it is to see real ones.  That being said, the above example is fairly distracting and obvious.

The point of the above scene is to establish that the Denzel Washington character (in the movie Fallen, if you were wondering) is a salt of the earth cop who plays everything straight.  He won’t take bribes, he won’t be intimidated, and he drinks Budweiser despite all of evil James Gandolfini’s imported options.  The fact that Budweiser tastes like goddamn water does not bother him.  The idea of the advertisement plays into that point in the scene: they want to establish that Budweiser drinkers, like Denzel, are plain, salt of the earth working guys.  It all works out.

I suppose the ad is covered for somewhat by having Gandolfini list other Budweiser brands that Washington does not want either, but mostly that just translates to reminding the audience that there is also (or there was, at the time) Bud Ice and Bud Dry if you don’t like plain Budweiser.

~ by sthanley on October 2, 2008.