Why do people have a problem with Product Placements in movies?

Kingp35

After reading the review thread of "The Island" in the film review forum here I have come to notice that some people have a serious problem with product placements in movies. Ok granted there was a lot in this movie but what I want to know is why is this a genuine problem for some people and how does a reebok runner or a coke can take away from a film? I seriously cant see how it could possibly make a movie worse.

For example if walk down a street you will see many products around you. If you buy a pair of runners they are going to be of a brand, if you buy a can of something it is going to have a name attached to it. If a director started inventing his own products then I think that would take away from the movie as it would make it less believable imo. I really cant see peoples problem with this at all. There are products all around us why shouldn’t they be in movies as well?

Im looking forward to hear peoples reasons how product placements could possibly make a film worse because it is totally beyond me.

I will admit that the xbox scene in the island was a bit much but it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the movie.

Rabies

Subtle product placement is ok. In your face is not.

StonedParadoX

what movie had in your face product placement?

i dont really care tbh its not like its the end of the world

and when u say in your face product placement ..watch tv ..go in town ..its all IN YOUR FACE

Necronomicon

It annoys me when it's too blatent. I haven't seen The Island, but the ipod thing in Blade Trinity was ridiculous. We have to watch ads all the time on tv, not to mention the growing amount of ads we have to endure when we go to the cinema, so we shouldn't have to watch in-movie ads when all we want to do is watch a movie.

Sarky

I, Robot.

[new shoes arrive, Mr. Smith goes yay and a large unnecessary close up of a pair of Converse occurs]

[later]

"Hey, nice shoes!" [points]

"Vintage 2005!"


'Nuff said.

egan007

Cause i pay 8 euro in to see a film not a can of coke

monkeyfudge

I only really have a problem when it is blatent and gets in the way of the film.

I have no problem with the product placements that were in Minority Report for example. As they were also being used to highlight how commercially orientated the world is going to be in the future, and it was interesting to see how the adverts could scan your retinas and address you personally.

But then you have the iPod in Blade Trinity and the Carlsberg truck in Spider-man. The camera needlessly focused on the product placements in those films and it only served to distract you from enjoying the film.

Morrigan

Personally, I feel like I'm being sold something when I'm just trying to enjoy a good story.

Hercule

I know I get annoyed when i see advertisements in films because it seems like a kinda cheap way to bombard us with even more advertising - its hell having to sit threw 5-10 mins of ads before the film starts only to be subjected to slightly subliminal advertising in the form of lead characters drinking,wearing or using certain well known products during the film itself.

But however the main thing that I think pisses people off is the fact that the most people see the cinema as a form of escapism - a place they can go to forget for a short while about the new "Chocolate Sprite" or "10% apr"(whatever the hell that is). I think it brings the film back (DOWN?) to reality when you see these ads. Minority Report is a big example of this - i found certain seems came off as very tacky and corny in this otherwise futuristic and clever film due to the over-use of the "advertising of the future"

Rabies

StonedParadoX wrote:

what movie had in your face product placement?

Blade and iRobot are just 2 movies mentioned by other posters. The scene in Spiderman 1 when the Goblin flies around the city for the first time, just a big advert for Sony, Coca Cola and few more companies.

Kingp35

Sarky wrote:

I, Robot.

[new shoes arrive, Mr. Smith goes yay and a large unnecessary close up of a pair of Converse occurs]

[later]

"Hey, nice shoes!" [points]

"Vintage 2005!"


'Nuff said.

This was an attempt at humour imo as the converse runners were featured in more than one scene so it cant be counted as your average product placement. I think this was supposed to be some kind of witty joke. Also the fact that the whole reason converse are popular today is because they are in a retro kind of style. I cant see how this could annoy you

Sarky

You can't see how being shown a pair of shoes and being told how GREAT they are from the year 2005, when I was expecting some, oh I don't know, plot development, would be annoying?

Retr0gamer

It's distracting and really does effect the suspension of disbelief. Everytime I see a close up of a placement product I say to my self 'ah ffs!' and any atmosphere or setting of the film is ruined by that one shot. It is ridiculous that films set in the future have people wearing todays fashion items like the puma trainers and the Apple computers that would be obsolete in 2019 in The Island or the 'vintage 2005' trainers in I, Robot.

I think the first picture of this review sums up I Robot nicely:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=i_robot

TerrorFirmer

The said scene in I,Robot was actually somewhat funny I thought. Not as in your face as they could have made it, at least they tried blend it in with the context of the film. Same with the CD Player he uses.

As for the topic generally, advertisement is ok as long as its not blatantly obvious and doesn't strike you as being an obvious advertisement

Hugh Hefner

Kingp35 wrote:

If a director started inventing his own products then I think that would take away from the movie as it would make it less believable imo.

So you were annoyed by the Red Apples in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Pulp Fiction and the Big Kahuna Burger in Pulp Fiction?

Retr0gamer

Kingp35 wrote:

This was an attempt at humour imo as the converse runners were featured in more than one scene so it cant be counted as your average product placement. I think this was supposed to be some kind of witty joke. Also the fact that the whole reason converse are popular today is because they are in a retro kind of style. I cant see how this could annoy you

A witty joke! I think not. It seems that you didn't laugh either just like the rest of the audience I saw the film with unless the audiable sigh was laughter? If it was a joke it was so bad it could have made baby jesus cry. Reports form the Vatican indicate that baby jesus almost choked to death at that point on his own vomit indicating that it was indeed a piece of satanic corporate product placement.

Bacchus

I'm one of those people that the OP is refering to in the Island thread. I find product placement quite amusing in movies, particularly when it's blatent product placement. I'v never seen anyone say a movie is bad because of product placement although the most blatent product placement is usually in movies that were never going to be oscar material in the first place.
It can be annoying if it's in your face and is an obvious advertisment that has no place in the context of the movie (Xbox in "The Island", Runners in "I,Robot", Phillips player (I think) in I,Robot etc.).
I was never bothered by the Spiderman product placements because they are always in the background to the action/story. The problem comes about when the advertisment becomes center stage as opposed to the movie. The Island and I,Robot are guilty of this and it's a pity because both movies are quite enjoyable.
Blatent product placement doesn't make a movie worse... it just gets in the way of the movie being as enjoyable as it should be... does that even make sense???

ObeyGiant

I also spoke up in the thread about the Island, berating the amount of it in this movie. And for the sake of clarification, I don't generally have any problem with product placement in movies, when they make sense within context. Done well, they can heighten the sense of believability. For example, Minority Report had a fair amount of product placement, but the filmmakers went to great pains to ensure that they didn't seem out-of-place and made sense in the context of the movie and didn't interfere with the story in any way. With the Island, I felt that there was no attempt made to include the products in any kind of subtle way. The most glaring being the Xbox part - they've changed the Xbox logo slightly for the launch of the Xbox 360, but the Island, apparently set 40-odd years in the future has the current Xbox logo. Ditto the MSN Search bit.

Bri

ObeyGiant wrote:

I also spoke up in the thread about the Island, berating the amount of it in this movie. And for the sake of clarification, I don't generally have any problem with product placement in movies, when they make sense within context. Done well, they can heighten the sense of believability. For example, Minority Report had a fair amount of product placement, but the filmmakers went to great pains to ensure that they didn't seem out-of-place and made sense in the context of the movie and didn't interfere with the story in any way. With the Island, I felt that there was no attempt made to include the products in any kind of subtle way. The most glaring being the Xbox part - they've changed the Xbox logo slightly for the launch of the Xbox 360, but the Island, apparently set 40-odd years in the future has the current Xbox logo. Ditto the MSN Search bit.

A good response - I agree completely. I think PP is something we're all aware of , but in certain instances like the Island, it just bubbles over. OP: There's a major difference in showing Times Square / Picaddily Circus etc. with logos all over the place to make things more tangible. Same goes for a much smaller scale - having a brand in the background is fine and can even *gosh* add to the film. It's the foreground that is the problem. I don't like my intelligence being insulted when there is literally nothing else in the shot but a product. Sounds a bit extreme? Well in the Island (what a resource!) there's a point where he picks up a drink. But all you see is the drink - logo facing you - and then a hand come down to pick it up. I'm obviously just not born with the virtue of tolerance to that kind of rubbish.

Here's a quote from canmag.com:
"Aquafina, Xbox, MSN, Budweiser, Reebok and Puma all make many appearances throughout the film, with every logo perfectly placed right in front of our eyes so we all know that they paid tons of money to advertise their product. It may not annoy many people, but to this dedicated movie viewer it not only was incredibly annoying, but seriously distracted me from following the story…..what little of it there was."

There is commentary on certain business sites pointing that critics seize on PP in bad movies to help sink it - I think fair enough. If the film's bad then it hardly helped to be working out the angle to shoot the can at so it gets maximum exposure.

As another poster said, I think people are more aware of the reach of marketing in our daily lives and being subjected to it in a few brief hours of escapism is not a good thing. This (probably) applies to films that arn't trying to be realistic...blatantly seeing a familar logo that doesn't fit/add to the scene just pulls you out of the film.

This is a case of people complaining for the sake of complaining.

I disagree.

ObeyGiant

To add a little more to this...

The product placement in The Island not only jars you out of your enjoyment of the movie, but is in fact so heavy-handed that it tears a bunch of holes through the already-thin plot. For example:

* Why brand anything within the clone facility?
* How, within such a clinical, superbly run facility that can detect human contact, did Lincoln lose a shoe?
* How did Jordan know what ice-cream was, and how did she know that kids loved it?
* Why, in a facility that prides itself on keeping its inhabitants "docile" and "without emotion", did they insist on having a holographic videogame of your likeness fighting another person?

monkeyfudge

This is what I love about the movie Repoman.

Alex Cox couldn't get anyone willing to place their products in the film, so all the stuff just has generic packaging. So cans of beer just have the word 'beer' writen on them and bags of chips just have 'chips' written on them... very funny.

Venom

Both I-robot and Blade 3 went way over the top in the product placement stakes.

I-Robot
1) 2 scences I can remember off hand of Will (oh hell naw) Smith going on about his ****ing trainers. In a world when it seems unthinkable that robots can do anything wrong never mind attack or even kill a human, Will seems only freaked out that his shoes are runied and not that a couple of hundred robots just attacked him? All the mention of his damm runners just stoped the flow of the movie and snapped any belief the audience had that this film was set in the future out of the movie and back to the present.
2) 2 scenes again about his poxy CD player.
3) Far to many scenes to mention about his car being an Audi. It was like he was the only guy on the dammed planet with brand named stuff.

Blade 3
Ipod, Ipod, Ipod, Imac,Ipod, Ipod. This costent advertisment helped kill the flow of the movie not to mention the use of the ipod didnt even make sence in the setting it was being used in such who needs the use of their hearing in hand to hand combat?

mike65

Bill Cosbys Leonard Part 6 (a truly crap movie) takes the biscuit for placement it becomes "Spot the Coca Cola" time. Mac and Me must have been funded by McDonalds alone.

Mike.

Bri

Come to think of it I guess I truly dislike PP because it feels like there is more sponsorship than ever...or it's more blatent. Sponsorship of any vaguely popular TV show, horrible product placement in music videos - even in the lyrics too (yes they are paid for that). It all adds up to make it really annoying to see more of it in the cinema.

CuLT

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ixoy

I also shuddered at the, now near infamous, "Blade 3" iPod sequence and Will Smith's trainers for "I, Robot." But there has been one occasion where product placement was funny - in "Arrested Development" (ok, not a movie) when they eat a burger in "Burger King", have the character comment aloud how great the restraunt is, and the announcer say - perfectly innocently - "It sure is."

Kingp35

OK my point was this. Im not trying to say that product placement is films is good or that it isnt good y whole point is that I fail to understand how it makes the movie less enjoyable or a worse film. I simply watch the movie I dont look out for PP. It doesnt affect me when im watching the movie I simply pay no attention to it if it happens.

There maybe the odd exception such as the xbox scene where I think its a bit stupid but i not that bothered by it. I think its pretty sad if your complaining about somebody picking up a can and heaven forbid the logo is facing the camera. So what? Are you that much of a tight ass that this really bothers you?

I can agree that ridiculous PP such as said xbox and ipod scenes in The Island and Blade Trinity can annoy people but the other things shouldnt. I think your just looking out for these things such as showing you the logo otherwise they would just pass you by and you can get on with enjoying the movie.

Im not saying PP in films is good and im not trying to justify why its done but im just saying then when I watch a movie I generally dont even notice it and if I do it doesnt take away from my enjoyment.

Why does it bother people so much? Is it just people who see alot of movies like the people who post here who have a problem because the average Joe would pay no notice whatsoever

Venom

It bothers viewers when its right in your face type placement like I-Robot, Blade 3 and The Island type product placement as it makes you feel like your watching an ad for those products and takes priorety over the story/plot of the film.

Normal product placement that dosent zoom in on the product, dosent require a speech about the virtues of said product and is basicly in the back ground such as a character driving a certain type of car of using a IBM pc or drinking 7 up is fine.

crazy angel

movie with the most advertisements..............................................................supersize me!!!!!! lol

qz

crazy angel wrote:

movie with the most advertisements..............................................................supersize me!!!!!! lol

Nice input to the thread there.

crazy angel

thanx!