Roger Fingas
Apple has once again, after a three-year gap, taken the Overall Product Placement title in Brandchannel's Brandcameo Product Placement Awards, highlighting the companies inserted most often into Hollywood movies.
According to Brandchannel, Apple products appeared in nine out of 35 movies that topped US weekend box office in 2014, beating out Sony and Coca-Cola by a single film. References ranged in scale from a villain mentioning the iPod shuffle in The Lego Movie to an extended Apple Store scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Some other blockbusters with Apple products included Ride Along, The Fault in Our Stars, and Gone Girl. Prior to this year's victory, Apple previously claimed the award in 2009, 2010, and 2011.
Apple products also made their way into a number of movies below the first-place threshold as well, including Birdman, Sex Tape, Tusk, and Sabotage.
Product placement in films, television and other media can be controversial. While such placement helps to pay for movies that cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, critics note that it sometimes distracts from the plot or even steers it in a different direction.
Brandchannel has in fact given its latest Worst Product Placement award to Apple's Beats brand for Transformers: Age of Extinction. In one scene, a character able to produce virtually anything with his mind specifically chooses to create a Beats Pill speaker.
Age of Extinction is in fact cited as having the most product placements of any 2014 blockbuster, numbering 55 brands in all. Runners up included Gone Girl (48), Ride Along (37), and 22 Jump Street (32).
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
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Amber Neely
17 Comments
Don't worry, Samdung has practically financed all of Avengers 2. The camera even pauses on a Samscum store at points.
The actual premise of Captain America 3: Civil War is a war between the superheroes that use Apple and the ones that use Samsung.
I loved that scene in the Apple Store...
[quote name="Tallest Skil" url="/t/185043/apple-reclaims-top-spot-in-movie-product-placement-rankings#post_2685464"] The actual premise of Captain America 3: Civil War is a war between the superheroes that use Apple and the ones that use Samsung. [/quote] The title is actually [I]Captain America 3: Lollipop Solider[/I].
Why is this news? Since you have to pay to have products placed, it's basically an advertisement. Would there be a post if Apple was the #1 advertiser?
Back in the days when film companies requested to use products in films, I used to get calls from set designers looking for certain products I was involved with. But after going completely out of my way to get them what they wanted (like rush shipping several hundred units from Europe to the U.S. or even manufacturing more packaging in one case) and then going to see the film and the product wasn't used, after this happened several times, I stopped responding to such requests.
The more interesting case is where Apple products are used, but the Apple logo is covered up. In those cases, I suspect that Apple did not pay for product placement and the set designers simply wanted to use Apple products because of their design.