Product Placement in Movies Needs to Stop

hey everyone let's talk about something that is basically a necessity for any kind of creative Endeavor to succeed product placement nowadays when you hear words like product placement or advertising or sponsored content you probably think of something on YouTube like this raid Shadow Legends raid is one of the most ambitious RPGs of 2019 iPhone but it's important to note that product placement has been around for decades now existing even as far back as in radio shows another older content today though I want to talk about product placement and sponsored content in movies more specifically I want to talk about a few different ways movies try to do it and the times it works and the times it doesn't really work first off let's talk about one of the most fondly remembered moments of product placement in any movie ever Wayne's World Wayne's World is something that was pretty Innovative for the time which is basically well that's where I see things just a little differently contractor no I will not bow to any sponsor it's like people only do things because they get paid and that's just really sad ah newprint little yellow different breaking the fourth wall to look directly at your audience and say hey this is a movie I'm getting money from this company and because of that we have to include their product in our film so option one for product placement in film directly address the audience but what makes this scene work so well in Wayne's World I think first it fits into the established tonal theme of the film Wayne's World isn't taking itself too seriously it knows it's a goofy comedy movie and often times it thrives on that ability to tell its main plot points hey no stairway denied Wayne's World sets itself up to make fun of a lot of other media so it makes fun of people who are against the system while willingly participating in it as well and wraps it up with the use of an ad it feels tonally similar to the rest of the film and the audience isn't taken away because of it the direct addressed by Wayne to the camera and therefore the audience makes us feel like it's not just Wayne as a character saying these words but also Mike Myers himself communicating it to the audience it's also important to note that Wayne's World itself was based on a Saturday Night Live skit I think this origin definitely helps with the direct address it takes SNL viewers are used to this kind of tongue and cheek humor and it's almost self-deprecating in a way Wayne talking about sellouts on TV while Mike Myers himself has been on SNL I'm sure there were quite a few people that thought that by going on SNL Mike Myers was selling out so direct fourth wall breaking certainly works for Wayne's World there we have it then if you're making a comedy and you need to include product placement in it simply have a character look right at the camera break the fourth wall and you're golden no problems at all I'm kidding obviously not every comedy movie works as a fourth wall break king meta commentary about product placement and product placement can't necessarily work as well in every comedy movie Just because it breaks the fourth wall Wayne's World sets itself up in a TV environment it makes sense for Wayne to have all of these objects around him in the absurdest world that's not going to work for every movie out there comedy or not nothing illustrates the tact needed for fourth wall break and what happens when it isn't done perfectly like Deadpool okay okay put your pitchforks down I don't dislike Deadpool at all but I do find its success and praise for subverting the typical Marvel movie formula to be a bit astonishing if I'm being honest nobody's getting hurt come on one of the most common phrases you hear when referring to the problems with how superhero movies are made is the common onliners and that just happened kind of lines sleep go to sleep go to sleep why does Deadpool get a pass on these elements just because it makes fun of other Marvel movies I mean that seriously pointing out something does not immediately absolve you from being a part of it big CGI fight coming up one of the first fourth wall breaks in Deadpool is this following scene my boyfriend said this was a superhero movie but that guy in the red suit just turned that other guy into a [ __ ] Kebab wow so Deadpool is different than other superhero movies then while it may not be exactly as blatant of product placement as Wayne's World I would argue that what Deadpool is doing here is marketing itself as a not like other superheroes movie The only problem is that it is almost exactly like all other superhero movies movies Deadpool is marketing itself as not a superhero movie but in the end Deadpool gets the girl and kills a bunch of bad guys along the way how is Deadpool actually that different from something like Iron Man both movies have a narcissistic wise cracking lead who gets the girl in the end and kills a bunch of bad guys along the way the only real difference is the level of blood shown on screen see by setting itself up as different from other Marvel movies Deadpool inherently has big shoes to fill when it doesn't follow up on these expectations it can leave the movie feeling like it's trying too hard to be funny rather than containing the fourth wall breaks to just self-deprecating jokes about itself here and there the insistence to bring the larger superhero movie film space into comparison ultimately hurts Deadpool more than it helps it sure it may have a few elements that are different but does it really do that much different than the other Marvel movies I don't think so so that's one way movies can do product placement directly reference it to the audience now I want to look at the way that a lot of movies do product placement in a way that has the potential to either be incredibly good or incredibly bad it's a very fine line which is weaving the product placement into the story itself that's right you heard me why go through all the trouble of trying to hide all of these big corporations and brand names from the audience if you have a way that you can incorporate it into the story Itself by making it a plot point it's a way for movies to show that they're both aware of their product placement while also giving a nod to the audience letting them say something that's basically the equivalent of hey this movie is sponsored by this company now you know but I'm going to do you one better and work it into the movie itself so it feels more organic for for a recent example of a movie that does this incredibly well in my opinion I want to look at David Fincher's movie The Killer the opening of the movie starts with the main character and unnamed Hitman for hire telling us about himself and his world view it's amazing how physically exhausting it can be to do nothing Paris awakens unlike any other city except luck isn't real nor is karma or sadly Justice one is born lives their life and eventually one dies the purposes of clarity I'm going to be referring to the character called the killer in this movie as just fast Bender the last name of the actor that plays him given all of this Preamble about who he is and what he thinks of the world around him when fast Bender puts in headphones and plays his music only for the entire soundtrack of the movie to consist of the Smiths it doesn't just feel like a piece of product placement but instead an organic part of the character that we are getting to see a lot of lyrics by The Smiths talk about feeling alienated from [Music] society again [Music] human being too scared shy or simply different to engage with the average everyday people of the world it's not hard to think that fast Bender feels the same way delegated to a role where every week or even day he has to act as someone that he isn't the lines are blurred so much that he doesn't even fully know who he is anymore when fast Bender begins to play the first song of the entire movie well I wonder by The Smiths it feels like the character is screaming out at us and the entire world around him the song is all about feeling lost from the human race some of the lyrics like gasping but somehow still alive perfectly sum up how the character feels doomed to look out on a world with no way to connect to it he lives a life of solitude moving through each month as someone completely different and losing himself along on the way as the scene progresses and fast Bender sets up his rifle to take the shot at his Target the music switches to the song How Soon Is Now the reference is obviously slightly more direct talking about the moment when fast Bender will choose to take the shot and hopefully kill his Target as we hear him talk about how he has to anticipate rather than improvise anticipate don't improvise The Motto which is repeated and subsequently proven wrong multiple times throughout the film it to me refers to the unpredictable nature of humanity as much as F Bender desires to be different from the rest of humanity at his core all he really desires is to fit in as the movie escalates we see his emotions take over after his lover is assaulted fast better has to improvise multiple times through basically the entire film nothing really goes to plan the killer uses this product placement method more throughout the film another moment of product placement I found extremely well done was the use of Amazon fast Bender goes and purchases items he needs to break into someone's apartment from Amazon the global Monopoly that Amazon has on the consumer Market makes it so so that there is such a wide variety of things that fast Bender can buy to commit these crimes without the company ever raising any suspicions he doesn't have to interact with any humans to get what he wants he buys a key fob copier and uses it to make a copy so he can get close to his client without anyone batting an eye or questioning his motives behind buying the device the killer uses these companies that are present in the modern-day masterfully by making them subtle plot points in the film itself the movie is at least to me all about the ways we put our trust in different services and products without a concrete understanding of how they work and how easy they can fail other movies that try to do this don't always get it right though and it doesn't matter if the film is fiction or based on a true story take Nomad land for example the film starts off with the main character getting laid off as her entire company shuts down before getting a seasonal job at Amazon and eventually going on the road to become a nomad only the movie doesn't really give us any of Fern's thoughts on this there's surprisingly little time devoted to talking about this switch doesn't it feel like it falls a little flat the movie uses Amazon as a plot point but then never really does much with it sure an audience can try and infer that perhaps Fern felt trapped by the constant consumerism she was helping to support but without any real commentary on it from Fern herself or the movie it leaves the movie feeling Hollow and not highlighting this difference the movie shows Fern living in her van because she isn't making a whole lot of money off of Amazon but it never really goes into the fact that Fern is working for a job but unable to have a living wage instead Fern seems happy and content at her job and it is only when it stops and the price of keeping her van there goes up that she seems forced out and sad but not a addressing this large product placement Nomad land loses out on the potential to make an interesting and compelling critique on capitalism and the housing struggles that continue to this day Amazon in the film is presented as a great place to work with amazing people and nice working conditions one of the first scenes of Amazon is a talk about safety hey everybody how's everybody doing today all right let me get a safety tip but Chloe Z is the director never really gives the audience a lot to think about with this moment in Fern's life finally the type of product placement that we are probably all used to and is by far the most common is product placement that just blindly ignores the fact that the movie is getting money and the brands are getting promotion from being in the film because I'm blind most of the time this product placement gets put in the background it Blends in with other backing elements of the film both physically and narratively everyone has seen an Audi that a character drives or a restaurant they end up eating at and we don't really question it these elements in films are not accidental no matter how hard a film might try to tell you that they are still usually this is the necessary evil if you will a film fil making unless you are funding everything yourself you're probably going to have a bit of a give and take with advertisers but their product in your movie in exchange for helping Finance the film there are too many movies to count that I think do this well the fact of the matter is basically all of the movies you see coming out in theaters today you'll go watch them enjoy them and not think at all about the advertising that's being done during them let me just pick a random popular movie from the past few years La La Land it's got a few moments of product placement that are a bit more on the nose such as this joke what kind a Prius that mean that that doesn't help me but also every time you're seeing Ryan goling tinkling away at the piano or Emma Stone standing around in a gorgeous yellow dress the fact is that there is probably at least some amount of product placement and money having exchanged hands them to end up in exactly that yellow dress or playing that exact model of piano there is a dark side to this blind don't acknowledge it attitude that films can have with advertising though it's when the product placement is not a small no in the background or a one-off joke but instead a large element in the film that goes completely uncommented on by the movie or even worse is praised even though the advertising's placement in the film comes off as tacky or in-your-face generally this in-your-face advertising is made substantially worse if it betrays the rest of the tone of the movie let's look at some examples so you can see what I really mean if I show you this poster for the hit zombie movie with Brad Pit World War Z or Zed if you're Canadian what do you think it's going to feel like tonally probably kind of dark with some good action scenes and you'd mostly be right all the way up until the very end where Brad Pit's character saves the entire Human Race by discovering this cure to the zombie virus he stops takes a can of Pepsi out of a Pepsi branded vending machine that seems to only contain Pepsi and takes a drink this is laughable right I mean it might be dramatic to say that the entire movie is undermined or ruined by the hilarity and stupidity of the scene but it's certainly weird not only that it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense either this research facility is in the UK at a medical lab why in the world would they have a vending machine that just serves Pepsi Pepsi it's not even Coca-Cola finally let's look at one of my most hated moments of advertising and product placement in a film ever without fail Adam Sandler's 3% rated rotten Razzy winning comedy movie Jack and Jill at the very end of this movie after an hour and a half of some of the worst attempts at comedy and acting the audience has ever seen oh my God I got to touch that okay I'm ready Let's Go the movie ends with a commercial with alucino for Duncan Donuts where one of the most vile poisonous cringe inducing words is spoke into the English language the dunino dunino don't mind if I do what's my name it's a whole new gameo this entire movie is clearly a cash grab for Sandler who by no means is a prestigious actor but at least in most of his other comedy movies it seems like he's having fun with it this movie on the other hand this product placement the whole thing makes me wish I was just watching a Tik Tok NPC live stream instead product placement is something that has to be done right a film doesn't have to make it a story element or try and be tongue and cheek with its advertising of Brands but it's it's not hard to put things in the background but when you see a Moment Like This in a feature film that got made I think you have to ask yourself do I like giving this product money because that's exactly what you're doing movies are advertising to you all the time whether you're aware of it or not every single bad movie based on a property like the Emoji movie that comes out has a good chunk of people that rush to the cinema to hate watch it but if I can leave you with anything let me leave you with this advertisers don't care about why you're watching their ads they just care that you watch them every time you see a company pay millions of dollars for a Super Bowl ad and you ask yourself why is this even being made surely everyone knows what Doritos or Coca-Cola is remember that advertisers aren't just trying to get your money by enticing you to go out and buy their product they're trying to worm their way into your subconscious so that the next time you're in a convenience store half asleep trying to get some snacks you grab a bag of Doritos and a coke at your local 7-Eleven because Jimmy Fallon has a two for one deal you leave the store get into your car drive all the way home and not realize that you've become just another mindless consumer with your money so please next time you're watching a film look out for the ways they're adding product placement into that film and at the very least please try and remain cognitively aware of the fact that it's all advertisement and they're trying to get your money thank you all for watching this video I'm sorry it might seem a little bit more rushed than some of my other ones I've just moved to a new place if you liked it be sure to like And subscribe and I will see you all next time goodbye

Channel: Sterling Wesson

Views: 6,406

Keywords: Product placement, movie video essay, capitalism, advertising, advertising in movies, product placement in movies, socialism, Deadpool, marvel movies, marvel movie video essay, superhero movie, iron man, avengers, nomadland, amazon, union, amazon prime video, world war z, world war z video essay, bullet train, brad pitt, SNL, Saturday night live, SuperBowl, ads, sponsored content, tiktok, attention span, critical thinking, media literacy

Id: MzUsLrNBoEc

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2024