Product placement in movies is now so overdone that we may not even notice it unless a particular film or TV show really hits us over the head with a blatant in-your-face product shot. Otherwise, seeing commercial goods everywhere merely seems like everyday life in capitalist America. Just look at any of the websites that tally up products spotlighted in mainstream movies and you’ll probably be surprised (though not shocked) at how many brands appear in each new release. Did you notice that Blades of Glorycontains 38 separate products? Probably not. Many of those products couldn’t have gotten their money’s worth, because the movie doesn’t allow the audience to walk away recalling any one particular item.
At a time when TV’s Top Chef and 30 Rock show us how lame blatantly whorish and ironic product placement can get, and while moviegoers are being subjected to more subliminal, suggestive and unintentional advertisements (Speed Racer, Wall-E and Beverly Hills Chihuahuarespectively have us thinking about McDonalds, Apple products and Taco Bell, though some of these associations are not necessarily the movie’s fault), it’s good to remember that not all product placement is superfluous or despicable. Some of it is actually funny, smart and beneficial to mankind.
At 30 seconds, the above clip is only one tenth of the film it’s teasing. But I guess we’re advertising short films now? I wouldn’t exactly call it a trailer, of course. More like those ingenius “watch the first five minutes of…” clips that help woo an audience for a movie that might not be tracking so well. However, giving us five minutes of Pixar’s Prestowould be giving the whole thing away. So, here’s a little preview.
The thing I find more interesting than the idea that Pixar is bothering to sell us on its latest short (which will screen ahead of Wall-Ein theaters) is the idea that Pixar seems to also be selling us on something else: Trix cereal. Doesn’t that rabbit in the film look exactly like the Trix rabbit? OK, maybe not exactly, but then that’s how this new “product suggestion” thing works. And considering we’ve already learned that Wall-E has admitted Apple product suggestion, it’s not very far-fetched to think that Presto does too.
I guess in a way the Trix rabbit fits with Pixar movies, because a lot of adults enjoy them. Is Disney trying to say: “silly adult moviegoers, animated films are for kids”? I doubt it. But are they at least trying to say: “buy Trix”? Perhaps. I guess yesterday when I Watch Stuff questioned the point of having a preview for a short and claimed we’re nearing the point of having commercials for commercials, the site missed the truth. We already have commercials for commercials, and that’s one right there at the top of this general mills, I mean post.
Maybe this really is the year of “product suggestion”, a term coined recently by Risky Biz blogger Steven Zeitchik after noticing the subtle hint of a McDonalds logo on the driver’s helmet and race car in Speed Racer.
Following that, we now have Pixar suggesting iPods and other Apple products through its new animated film Wall-E. If you take a good look at the sleek robot character Eve, you might be reminded of the typical Apple product design, and apparently it’s not so coincidental. Wall-E director Andrew Stanton told Fortune magazine of Eve’s development and the benefit of having Steve Jobs as your umbrella:
“I wanted Eve to be high-end technology - no expense spared - and I wanted it to be seamless and for the technology to be sort of hidden and subcutaneous,” Andrew Stanton, Wall-E’s director, told Fortune. “The more I started describing it, the more I realized I was pretty much describing the Apple playbook for design.” It is, of course, not the first time a product has inspired a film character - think of the murderous HAL 9000 robot in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” based loosely on big IBM mainframes of the day.
At the Risky Biz blog, Steven Zeitchik accuses the Wachowskis of “insidious” product placement in Speed Racer, altering the design of Speed’s helmet and the Mach 5 to subliminally invoke corporate partner McDonalds. “It may not be brand placement. It’s something much newer and trickier: brand suggestion.”
FILMMAKER Magazine’s website has published the essay by David Gordon Green from the liner notes of the recently-released Benten DVD of Todd Rohal’s The Guatemalan Handshake. His first impression of that film? “I had a queer anxiety in my stomach that in fact the movie was “too good,” or should I say “special,” like a retarded kid who is enchanting and liberating in his or her world view, destined for a conflict with the traditional culture.”
Movie viral marketing or fan fic? It’s too early to tell, but twoG.I. Joecharacters have started Twittering. GeneralHawk’s latest update: “Having a late lunch at Bennigan’s with Snake-Eyes & Alpine. Alpine says The Roots newalbum is, quote, ‘Dope.’” [Tipped by Kevin]
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