“Apple was deemed top of the product placement charts on Tuesday after getting its computers, iPads, iPods and other items featured in 30 percent of the top movies at the U.S. box office in 2010… according to Brandchannel, the website of global brand consultancy Interbrand.,” Jill Serjeant reports for Reuters.
“Apple had roles in movies last year ranging from ‘Kick Ass’ to ‘The Other Guys’ and ‘Toy Story 3.’ Total Apple product placements beat those of runners-up Chevrolet, Ford and Nike,” Serjeant reports. “Apple was given the Brandcameo award for Overall Product Placement, which goes to the brand that makes the most discernible appearances in No.1 films at the U.S. box office that year. Apple, which also came top in 2009, capped a decade in which its products appeared in one-third of 334 films that reached number one status at the U.S. box office.”
Serjeant reports, “Handgun maker Glock was given a lifetime achievement award for its presence in action movies.”
Read more in the full article here.
Apple & Glock. Interesting.
bloodbath
+1
My two favorite brands.
I guess they don’t have a deathtime award for Glock.
I guess they don’t have deathtime award for Glock.
Product placement (apple included) is effectively ruining most movies and shows today. Too often to satisfy placement rules, the mood of a scene is broken simply to facilitate an obvious close-up of a product or new feature. So nice to hear Apple is officially the worst offender, but anyone who watched 24 or sees many movies knew that already.
CSI last week: Matt Stokes arrives at a scene deliberately set to show off a BRAND NEW JEEP (cameras gratuitously pan the entire vehicle front to back). He steps into his front yard and discovers a bomb, so he takes a photo, sending it to the bomb squad (camera does a super close-up of his IPHONE 4 showing off the zoom feature). The only thing missing was a SUBWAY logo that could have been written on his lunchbox.
I know what you’re talking about (especially 24 and it’s closeups of Ford vehicles, including the model tags and everything), but a lot of times I don’t think Apple products are placed in that way (a paid placement), but rather, they appear in general use, usually because Hollywood types use Macs exclusively.
For example, the episode of House that was on last night featured a MacBook Pro (and has many times before), but I don’t think that’s Apple paying Fox to put their product in there, it’s just happenstance, the prop department’s decision. Many advertising firms and film studios use Apple products, so when they need a computer, they just use what they have laying around.
Would you rather them have an unbranded box, or just cover the logo, or what?
lying around*
Edit function please.
Apple certainly placed the product in the TV series House, just as it did on Seinfeld, Sex And The City, and countless other shows.
I don’t see any problem with it, it is good advertising – so long as it is not a blatant thing.
MrMcLargeHuge is quite correct.
Apple does pay for product placement in many cases (such as House, M.D.), but in many more cases, they don’t. When a production designer needs to make a decision regarding props for characters, unless there is some product placement requirement that is pushed down from the show producers, (s)he will choose props based on his/her vision for the film/show. Oftentimes, reasons for choosing Apple products are obvious: superior industrial design that works extremely well with any setting, especially if the props belong to the protagonist. If you look at the props of protagonists, vs. props of antagonists, the ‘good guys’ will much more often have Apple props, while the ‘bad guys’ will almost NEVER use Apple gadgets and will always have some no-name device.
The sheer perfection of Apple’s industrial design very often leads production designers and their prop departments to go for Apple stuff by default, even when no money exchanges hands for product placement. Even so, Apple obviously reaps benefits from such visibility.
Obviously, they can’t show Apple’s logo without a clearance, but those are also automatic. For every product that is shown on any show or film with an identifying feature (logo, or shape, colour, or other characteristic), the producers need to obtain clearances from the makers’ legal departments, and I’m sure that in most cases Apple legal is more than happy to oblige, although we’ve seen scenes in shows where a character is so obviously using a MacBook (or MBP), but the logo is obscured. Either the show producers didn’t bother (or have time) to get the clearance, or (for some unclear reason) Apple declined to provide one.
Product placement completely ruined the new Star Trek movie. It made no sense for them to be drinking Pepsi and using Nokia phones. Money may be obsolete in Roddenberry’s 23rd century, but it’s clearly a primary concern for the 21st century assholes who made that movie.
I know what you mean, though I wasn’t bothered by these two placements: mainly because the movie itself was so well done.
But placements in future-vision sci-fi movies can be fraught with dangers, not least if the brand itself goes out of business. Witness ‘2001’ and its splendidly envisaged Pan Am space clipper. In the real world, Pan Am went belly-up in 1991, even if the name has been resurrected five times since.
I’m not a big fan of Glock products – they don’t feel right to me. I tend to avoid polymer frame pistols as much as I can. Glock trigger pull feels really awful to me. Now, a nice Sig-Sauer or H&K…
My buddy’s concealed carry is a Glock, and he loves it for that purpose. I’ve held it and fired a few rounds, it felt nice. Admittedly, I know little about handguns, I’m more of a trap & skeet guy myself, so shotguns are my forte.
I am with you. The Glock’s trigger, while admirable from an, ‘instant access’ viewpoint, is terrible in feel and makes Glocks very hard to shoot accurately. Shooting Glocks at targets is kind of like using Windows to get work done. You are being punished and handicapped. Macs are tops for productivity, and M1911s are tops for shooting.
Who woulda guessed there was an award for “Overall Product Placement, which goes to the brand that makes the most discernible appearances in No.1 films at the U.S. box office that year.”
Who gives a $hit?
Apple logos don’t bother me. It’s more obvious (and distracting for me) when you see a fictitious logo, or a piece of tape hiding a known logo.
What does bother me is an actual sales pitch for a product embedded in dialog.
I’ve stopped watching “Bones” (on Fox) because a main character stopped, in the middle the plot, to explain the features she loves in her new Toyota van.
Yuck! That actress had to feel like such a sales whore.
After it turned into a weekly event, I could take no more.
They may do a lot of beauty shots of Fords in “Fringe”, but at least they never put sales pitches in the dialog.
You gotta feel sorry for people who are given an ultimatum, be a sales whore or get ‘the treatment’.
In any case, sales whoring is professional death. Example: What ever happened to Mimi Rogers, (once wife of Tom Cruise, she who introduced him to Scienterrificology), after she whored for Philip Morris Co.? Now there was professional suicide, as if the Scienterrificology wasn’t bad enough. Poor dear.
Mimi is fine. Quite happy. Quite wealthy.
I always feel sorry for TV shows that have the generic PC laptop on a desk with the generic Windows logo on the back in place of the Apple logo, machines which of course do not exist. Pathétique.
Go glock!
Ya know, a lot of supposed ‘product placement’ could just be the result of authenticity. I mean, cops down here in Florida DO indeed drive around in Crown Vics and carry Glocks. 😀