Advertising and Marketing Within Movies

Wayne's World 1992

Movies for the past 100 years have attributed to the rise of advertising and marketing, because they themselves have been subtly and not so subtly become billboards for major companies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Gatorade, and many others. If you go to a movie theater and watch any movie, before the movies starts you'll get plenty of advertisements. Aside from pre-movie ads, you'll be sure to get some during the movie as well whether it's subtle or blatant. Usually they advertisements are referred to as product placement simply because that's usually all the company puts into a film.

Product placement in movies is a clever way to gain interest in a product, such as Mike Myers from Wayne's World holding a Pizza Hut box with a big smile on his face. What companies hope for is that a high-profile star may draw more attention to their product. While just placing a product anywhere to be seen, it may help to some degree, but when you have a popular star holding or using a particular product, it may help persuade the viewer that particular product is worth getting simply because someone famous is using it.

GoldenEye 1995

Even back when movies were still in the silent era, they managed to get product placement into the film. Wings, a 1927 silent film and World War I fighter pilots plugged Hershey's chocolate during the middle of the movie. The 1995 film GoldenEye (James bond film) was the focus of a BMW campaign for their new Z3 model and ended up with skyrocketing sales after the film debuted.

Happy Gilmore 1996

In other films such as Happy Gilmore, there's a section of the movie entirely base on Subway placement and advertising a new sandwich. It's done so cleverly that you don't particularly notice it as an outside advertisement to the viewers but rather it's meant for the people in the movie. Other than Subway, Happy Gilmore contained many more product placements that are considered cheap or poorly done because they're so obvious. They include AT&T, Budweiser, ESPN, and several other companies.
By: Justin Young