Thursday, May 17th, 2012
Have consumers reached a point of product placement overload? In today’s Ad Age, editor Rance Crain points out that the ad industry is counting on product placement in movies, TV shows, electronic games and mobile phones to be its salvation, but the ugly thought is beginning to seep into people?s brains that one reason box-office receipts for movies, and most recently DVD sales, are off is because movies are increasingly one gigantic product placement. Consumers object to paying for entertainment when they’re being sold stuff as part of the deal. The truth is that we have not reached an ‘overload’ point and it’s obvious this editorial was written prior to this weekend’s massive box office results for the new Willy Wonka ($55 million) and Wedding Crashers ($32 million). Wedding Crashers was one of the first movie tie-ins for Budweiser in almost 14 years .. and Wonka is all about tie-ins and integration. It’s a bit obvious that Crain is just trying to put a scare into brands thinking of making the move into integrated content — and it would have worked .. he just picked the wrong weekend to post his story.
