Product Placement – Is it Shameless or Just Good Business?

Product Placement – Is it Shameless or Just Good Business?

I teach a lot of marketing classes where we talk about product placement.  In a recent discussion we were talking about FedEx and the movie Castaway.  I read that the company didn’t pay for that mention.  I find that hard to believe but I guess it is possible.

Product placement is big business.  Recently BeBe launched a new line of clothes based on its popularity from 90210.

Here is a list of some very noticeable products placed in movies that you may remember.

  1. Taco Bell in Demolition Man
  2. Popeye’s Chicken in Little Nicky
  3. Reese’s Pieces in ET
  4. New Beetle in Herbie:  Fully Loaded
  5. AOL in You’ve Got Mail
  6. Several Dolls like Barbie, Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story
  7. Aquafina in National Treasure
  8. CNN in Contact
  9. Dr. Pepper in Spiderman
  10. Apple computers in too many movies to mention

Check out the following links for some more examples:

Movie-Moron.com – 10 Most Shameless Uses of Product Placement in Films

MetaFilter.com – Examples of Product Placement in Movies

Cracked.com – 10 Most Shameless Product Placements in Movie History

Listverse.com – Top 10 Blatant Examples of Product Placement in Movies

Wikipedia.com – The Complete Lowdown on Product Placement