Product Placement in the Movies

The next time you watch a movie, try to keep an eye out for products or brand-names you recognize. It's highly likely that you'll see one of the major soft drink companies represented. Is it Coke? Pepsi? Snapple? Once you've spotted something, see how many other scenes include that product. You'll start to see a trend. "How," you'll wonder, "can the actor hold the Coke can just the right way every time so that the logo is perfectly visible?"

Take a minute to comb through your movie memories. You'll probably recall at least a few of these now-famous product placements:

• Risky Business - Ray-Ban sunglasses
• Back to the Future - Pepsi products
• Demolition Man - Taco Bell (In the future, everything is Taco Bell...)
• You've Got Mail - America On-Line (AOL), Apple, IBM and Starbucks
• Austin Powers - Pepsi and Starbucks
• Cast Away - FedEx and Wilson
• Men in Black II - Ray-Ban sunglasses, Mercedes Benz, Sprint, Burger King

Product placement in movies is so ubiquitous that it's even become something to parody on the big screen. Two movies that do a good job of this are "Wayne's World" and "Josie and the Pussycats." In Wayne's World, the two main characters hawk a variety of stuff, including Nuprin, Pepsi, Pizza Hut and Reebok. The amusing part about this is that the product placement vignette takes place while the characters Wayne and Garth are lambasting the very thing they're doing. As Wayne says "Contract or no, I will not bow to any corporate sponsor," he is opening a Pizza Hut box and pulling out a slice of pizza. The camera lingers on the Pizza Hut logo and Wayne, holding the slice of pizza lovingly beside his face, smiles straight at the camera.

The movie "Josie and the Pussycats" takes the joke several steps further. A send-up on the music industry, "Josie and the Pussycats" manages to satirize name-brand integration throughout the film. To get an idea of just how saturated with brands, logos and products this movie is, here's a taste of what you can see in just the trailer alone (Keep in mind that the trailer is only two minutes and twenty-five seconds long!): America Online, American Express, Bebe, Billboard Magazine, Bugles, Campbell's Soup, Coke, Entertainment Weekly Magazine, Evian, Ford, Gatorade, Kodak, Krispy Kreme, McDonald's, Milky Way, Motorola, Pepperidge Farm Cookies, Pizza Hut, Pringles, Puma, Ray-Ban, Sega, Starbucks, Steve Madden, Target, and T.J. Maxx.

Cars in the Movies

Movie / Car

Herbie the Love Bug / Volkswagen Beetle

RoboCop / Ford Taurus

Back to the Future / DeLorean

Smokey and the Bandit / Pontiac Trans Am

The World Is Not Enough / BMW Z8

Laura Croft: Tomb Raider / Jeep Wrangler Rubicon

Photo courtesy DaimlerChrysler

According to a 2003 Chrysler press release, "The Jeep Wrangler Rubicon is the most capable Jeep ever built, so the heroic and extreme environment in which Lara Croft uses her custom Wrangler Rubicon in Tomb Raider is accurate... This is more than just a product placement. We have created a 360-degree integrated marketing campaign around the movie and the debut of the Wrangler Rubicon Tomb Raider model."