On any given day, the average American most likely sees a few hundred different advertisements. They’re on television, in magazines, on the internet, and even along the side of major highways. Advertisements are all around us, and the film industry has been using product placement for some time now, whether you realize it or not. From Aston Martins in James Bond and Iron Man driving an Audi to more subtle use of product placement like people drinking Coke. Whether you like it or not, the film industry uses product placement extremely often, and they typically generate a good bit of money from it. Essentially a movie studio approaches a company, or vice-versa, and says “hey can the lead actor drive our car, or wear our shoes”, for example. Companies pay film studios a certain amount of money to do this in a more subliminal form of advertising. So how much money can a film actually make through product placement?
I recently just saw the Entourage movie in theaters, and it had a fair amount of product placement. As a fan of the series, I was expecting this. Back when the show was on HBO, there was a side-plot where one of the supporting cast members attempts to fund a start-up tequila company. Those that have seen the show know that I’m talking about Avion. This Avion side-story was ongoing throughout the show, and even in the recent film the brand made an appearance (Mark Cuban was spotted wearing an Avion t-shirt, in addition to other appearances of the tequila). Back when I watched the show, I didn’t even know Avion was a real company. I assumed that they made it up for the show, but nope, I was wrong as they are very much a real and thriving brand (sorry, I’m not a tequila guy). This is just another example of product placement that’s been used right, at least in my opinion. I’m not too sure how much the show or movie brought in from this, but I’d imagine it to be a fair amount. So could a movie make, say $500 million from just product placements alone?
When looking at product placement in films, recently Man of Steel comes to mind. The blockbuster superhero film used a fair amount of product placement, and they brought in a lot of money. In the movie, we saw brands like Nokia, Sears, 7 Eleven, Budweiser, CNN, IHop, Gillette, Hershey’s, and a few others. Apparently the producers of the movie managed to sign around 100 contracts with brands and marketing firms to use their products. In total, Man of Steel brought in $160 million alone from advertisements through product placements. Wouldn’t you do something similar if you could guarantee your movie would make hundreds of millions before it even was released? Studios certainly do.
There was even that Morgan Spurlock film called The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, that was a documentary on branding, marketing, and product placement used in the film industry. The kicker was that they funded the entire film through product placement and working with advertisers. Still the film only raised around $1.5 million through product placement to fund the film, but you get the point.
So when you look at other large-budget movies like Man of Steel, they do make a considerable amount of money through product placement. However I would imagine that it would be very difficult for a movie to raise $500 million through product placements alone. That number certainly seems very high, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if a movie managed to do that. They would have to go above and beyond what’s acceptable for product placement, and arguably “sell out”, but I imagine that it could be done. So is it “bad” that we see Tony Stark using a Samsung tablet in The Avengers or James Bond driving an Aston Martin? I don’t think so. When a particular movie can secure hundreds of millions through just product placement, they can use that money to add more value to the film (theoretically). Maybe all one movie needs is just one advertiser to work with them, and they put the product placement funds to filming that 3 minute explosion scene or something. Regardless, product placement is here to stay and film studios need to make it bearable and fit seamlessly into the movie. Or you could make a joke about it like in Wayne’s World, which is probably my favorite use of product placement and this scene probably funded the movie:
Photo by Michael Buckner/Getty Images for Audi
