Guerilla Product Placement
I’ve been thinking about product placement ever since I saw “Transformers” a few months ago. I loved the way they took product placement to the next level.
I mean, sure, they had plenty of traditional product placement, like the actors using this product or that. But the main gimmick, of course, was the use of General Motors vehicles for the ‘good guy’ Transformers.
The classic Chevy Camaro Transformer above belonged, of course, to the hero. And because the hero was a total nerd, part of the car’s mission was to make him cool and help him score with the hot chick. So you got that strong emotional message, linking the classic Camaro to being cool.
But later the Transformer updated his look to the new, modern, hot-looking Camaro:
This brilliantly linked the coolness of the classic version to the modern appeal of the new. I’ve never seen product placement manipulated quite this skillfully.
This innovation got me to thinking - what other novel ways could use product placement? After a while, it hit me.
See, all you have to do is reverse assumptions. Why does product placement work? Because it creates a strong positive connection between the actors (or their roles) and the product. Reverse that and what do you get?
“Use product placement to create a strong negative connection.”
Let’s say that, instead of fishing for manufacturers to pay for positive product placement, filmmakers instead extorted manufacturers to pay them for NOT featuring their products in a negative fashion.
“Hey, the villain in our new film is going to kill hundreds of innocents, and we’re gonna show him doing it while sitting comfortably in the front seat of his new Chrysler. Or not, depending on how much it’s worth to you.”
So the manufacturer will be faced with the likely connection of:
with
Think of the untapped potential! How many manufacturers could filmmakers extort this way?
Oh yeah, they’d have to throw ‘em a bone with a positive placement every now and then…but otherwise, hey, Hannibal Lecter’s gotta eat…and he could eat that liver with a can of Van de Camps Fava Beans…or not…it’s up to you…
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5 Responses to “Guerilla Product Placement”
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Or the company could just not give you the rights to display their product at all. You can try to extort all you want, but without the rights they can sue you for your, ahem, negative product placement.
I just watched “The Winner from Defiance Ohio,” on DVD… there is a scene in which she gets to go on a shopping spree… brought to you by Ritz Crackers. Well if Ritz or Chevy or Chrysler wants to pay to make movies I like, I say let’em! They should pay me for putting their names in this comment!
@Eroq - didn’t seem to hurt “Supersize Me!”
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