For the past 15 years, www.brandchannel.com has been keeping tabs on product placement in films, specifically those that top the U.S. box office. The results of their annual Brandcameo Product Placement Awards reveal the true scale of product placement, from obvious over-the-top culprits to indie darlings – maybe a little offensive on the one hand, but also pretty amusing on the other.
Here are a few of this year’s highlights, with comments from www.brandchannel.com. Click here for their full story.
2014 Award for Overall Product Placement – Apple
“Three years have passed since Apple last won this award. After wins in 2010 and 2011, Apple’s onscreen dominance wilted. But Apple is back on top, though barely. Apple products appeared in nine of the 35 films that topped the U.S. weekend box office in 2014, or about a quarter of all #1s.
Apple’s brand cameos last year ranged from the passing mention in The Lego Movie to an outstanding Apple Store scene in Captain America: Winter Soldier.”
2014 Award for Achievement in Product Placement in a Single Film – ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’
“Transformers 4 finished far ahead of its nearest competition [with 55 brands featured – Ed.]. The closest three films were Gone Girl (48 brands), Ride Along (37) and 22 Jump Street (32). And yet, as chockfull as Age of Extinction was, it still did not come within a mile of 2011’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which boasted a whopping 71 on-screen brands.”
2014 Award for Product Placement Achievement in an Oscar-Nominated Film – ‘The Theory of Everything’ and Tide
“In the film, Hawking (played by Eddie Redmayne) leaves a box of Tide for his sweetheart [after explaining why men’s shirts at a dance were glowing – Ed.]. So why did the film use Tide and not Daz? New Media Group, the UK agency that placed Tide in the film, told us the answer is simple: Tide was assumed to be a more familiar brand for the film’s target US audience.”
2014 Award for Worst Product Placement – ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ and Beats
“Comparatively, 2014 was a slow year for truly awful product placement. Still, it had its share of pretty bad, bad and egregiously bad product placement.
Examples that audiences detested included Sony in Amazing Spider-Man 2, Stella Artois in Birdman, Bing in Robocop, Samsung in Veronica Mars, mostly everything in Transformers: Age of Extinction and absolutely everything in Adam Sandler’s Blended.
In a laboratory scene, Tucci as the baddie picks up some of the magic “Transformium” material and, facing the ability to use his mind to create nearly anything imaginable, he produces a Beats “Pill” speaker.”
Other awards include Best Role as a Supporting Product Placement, Product Placement Impact, Unwanted Product Placement, Lifetime Achievement for Product Placement and more.
