Apples, Audis and Italy, Oh My: 2010 in Product Placement
Posted by Abe Sauer on December 23, 2010 02:00 PM
In two months, Brandcameo will publish our annual Product Placement Awards, recognizing the products and brands that appeared and accomplished the most over the last year.
In the meantime, we invite you to take a quick look back at the past year in product placement with Audis, Ivies, Italy, Porsches, Prius punchlines and the best year ever for erectile dysfunction, after the jump.
Kick back and grab a snack from Dunkin Donuts while reading our rundown. It seems every other movie this year did. The brand's unmistakable clashing orange and pink logo was practically engineered to leap out at the audience from background scenes. Kick Ass, Paranormal Activity and The Town all featured Dunkin cups or bags. Even Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps replaced the iconic "Happy to serve you" New York coffee cup from the original Wall Street. (Related 2010 RIP: Designer Leslie Buck). The brand appears unlikely to let up in 2012; we've already spotted a huge Dunkin bag in the trailer for Source Code.
Speaking of Gordon Gekko, it was Wall Street 2 that provided the product placement understatement of the year. Asked about the product flotsam in his film, Oliver Stone said, "We needed help." That $$$ help came in the form of sprinkling sponsors' brands, from Heineken to IWC luxury watches, throughout the film. At least one prominently featured brand, Ducati, said it paid nothing for all its placement in the film.
Switching gears, 2010 proved that a whole genre of film opted out of "help" in the Oliver Stone sense of the word. This year really saw the trend of animated films aimed at children completely abandoning not just product placement but also "brand" references, become Hollywood's M.O. How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, Toy Story 3, Despicable Me, Megamind, and Tangled notched just 18 products or brand references (with 11 of those 18 accounted for by Toy Story 3.)
One of the only brand punchlines in 2010's animated films came from Despicable Me. It was a visual joke, aimed at parents and caregivers escorting tots to the film, about the financial crisis with Lehman Brothers as its punchline. Inside jokes about Wall Street brands might be a new trend, evidenced by the Goldman Sachs reference in the trailer for 2011's Take Me Home Tonight.
A "product" that got a boatload of A-list Hollywood screen time in 2010 was Italy, which got the full Frommer's treatment onscreen. While the romantic comedy When in Rome skipped and hopped through the ruin-strewn Italian capital, The Tourist was set in Venice as a suitable jaw-dropping background that could hold its own against the Jolie-Depp star power. Travel agencies are already jumping on board, with STA Travel offering The Tourist-inspired Eurail packages. Meanwhile, George Clooney's moody The American brought Hollywood cool to a part of picturesque rural Italy recently devastated by earthquakes.
Italy wasn't the only burg to get the loving film treatment though. Boston confirmed its place as a city full of stories, with its storied Harvard University also serving as the backdrop for The Social Network and the grittier parts of the city filling out The Town and The Fighter. Before his world imploded, Mel Gibson was a jaw-cracking Boston cop in Edge of Darkness. The Company Men, another Ben Affleck film, features a band of laid off Bostonites. All of these films relied heavily on Boston as an uncredited main character. Season 17 of the CBS reality show The Amazing Race even kicked off from Beantown.
Of course, Boston owes some of its onscreen popularity to hometown stars like Affleck and Wahlberg, but it also attracts film shoots with heavy tax incentives. That is why the Harrison Avenue Gaslight restaurant in Boston’s South End appears in the 2010 Tom Cruise action film Knight and Day, even though that film doesn't take place in Boston. It is debatable if these tax incentives actually benefit Massachusetts or not, but they are sure to keep the city on the big screen. In 2011 alone Boston will feature prominently in high-profile films like Moneyball, Zookeeper and Black Mass.
While Harvard continued its onscreen legacy as the top-of-mind university brand of 2010 thanks to The Social Network, its west coast rival Stanford made sure the plugs it got were memorable. Both The Social Network and Avatar (released in 2009 but dominating the holiday box office into early 2010) featured Stanford-emblazoned apparel that, um, was hard to miss.
Audiences might not have made out the Stanford name though if they were wearing as much Ray-Ban product as stars of some of the biggest hits of 2010. Just a sampling of films that saw Ray-Ban placement: Easy A, Takers, Eat, Pray, Love, Tyler Perry's Why Did I get Married Too?, Remember Me, The Next Three Days, The Expendables, Marmaduke, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, Knight and Day and Love and Other Drugs. The farcical film MacGruber held a "survival kit" sweepstakes that included a mullet wig and a pair of "Ray-Ban® Polarized Aviator Sunglasses." Ray-Ban appears unlikely to slow down in 2011, with on-screen placements already confirmed in Source Code, Lincoln Lawyer and Real Steel.
One of the keys to Ray-Ban's onscreen success is simple: Many Ray-Bans have "Ray-Ban" stamped on them, making them identifiable. This may seem obvious to many, but one of the odd details plaguing sunglass brands when it comes to product placement is brand identification. As we noted earlier this year, it is difficult for brands like Sama and Von Zipper, which received so much onscreen exposure in the hit Iron Man 2, to capitalize on the roles because consumers don't know what the brands are.
A perfect example from 2010 of Ray-Ban's success in this arena is the film chronicling corrupt DC lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Casino Jack. While the poster depicts Kevin Spacey in sunglasses of indeterminate brand, in the film itself Spacey can clearly be seen wearing Ray-Bans.
One brand that ruled 2010 and is never missed onscreen is Audi. Sure, Audi sedans had minor roles in films like The Karate Kid. But where the brand shined was with its R8 sports car model, which the brand is using to increase its profile.
In Iron Man 2 and Date Night, Audi R8s dominated their scenes. But the R8 also flooded the small screen, including recent TV placements in Hawaii Five-O, The Mentalist, Chuck, Numb3ers, CSI: Miami, NCIS: Los Angeles and Burn Notice.
This year, Audi's flagship racer could even be found in music videos, including Jay Sean and Lil Jon's Do You Remember and Lil Twist's Carte Blanche, which practically looks like an amateur Audi ad. It all shows how far Audi has come since its 2008 foray into product placement as the "stupid space car."
But Audi didn't have all the product placement fun. For our money, the Prius in The Other Guys had easiest the best showing. Derided and beaten throughout the film, the Prius won the audience over with a sense of humor. Toyota says they had nothing to do with it. It even made the poster!
One automaker that might want to worry about its onscreen role selection? Porsche. In three major films this year, Valentine's Day, Dinner for Schmucks, and Love and Other Drugs, Porsches were driven by fast-talking self-absorbed jerks.
If you experience a product placement lasting longer than this film, consult a marketing professional. The year saw not one, but two film protagonists shilling ED drugs. Based on the real life tale of a Pfizer salesman, Love and Other Drugs chronicles the life and loves of a Viagra salesman in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, in Little Fockers, it seems that Greg Focker has become a erectile dysfunction drug salesman himself. Taking some "Sustengo," Robert DeNiro replays the same joke Love's Jake Gyllenhaal gave us a few months earlier.
Hey Jameson, the people have spoken. Make it happen.
Finally, what would a year be without a boatload of Apple product placement? The brand claims not to pay for placements, even though it readily supplies free product to production managers. Below, a small sampling of the year in Apple product placement, from the demure background prop of Valentine's Day to the punchline of The Colbert Report the grotesque display of Gulliver's Travels.
What brands stood out in your moviegoing this year?
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