Whether you hate product placement for turning films into brand commercials or think it's a great way to fund movies by adding the reality of brands we encounter on a daily basis, there's no denying that some movies do it better than others. The Consumerist has a great look at 12 films loaded with product placement and evaluates the films based on three factors -the relevance to the story, the uniqueness of the brand to the film and how obvious the placement is. Unsurprisingly, the film with the highest score is 1989's The Wizard, which obtained a perfect score:
Relevance: 10/10 Don’t take this high score as an indicator of quality. Rather, it’s intended to show that this movie is a 100-minute Nintendo ad, and thus the use of Nintendo products is totally relevant.
Uniqueness: 10/10 Again, since the entire point of the film revolves around the Nintendo brand, it would be incongruous to have the characters continually playing a Sega console.
Obviousness: 10/10 The poster for the movie features not just the actors from the film, but the Power Glove and an illustration of Mario.
What films do you think featued the most obvious product placement and do you think it at least fit in with the storyline?
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) was funded by Beatrice foods to plug Wonkabars. Which at the time didn't take off as well as the movie did.
Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988) which product placement was a plot element in the film - production of the film was stopped - George Clooney (yeah, his first movie) suggests product placement to fund the completion of the film and for a few scenes after that there's a ton of blatant product placements. Worked right in for the parody.