It’s All E.T.’s fault

I’d have to say product placement in the movies really got started with the film E.T. M&M’s loss on that. According to the original script E.T. was suppose to be eating M&M. But M&M decided that Spielberg would have to pay them to use their product in the movie. Which didn’t go over to well. Then Reese’s comes along and offers to pay them to use Reese’s Pieces. After that Reese’s goes from almost nothing to owning 5% of the candy market.

Unless the there’s attempt at product placement in a movie people don’t seem to actually notice it. In my experience if they make it to obvious people tend to be put off the product if they don’t already like it. It seems the more subliminal a placement the better it is.

And then there are the TV commercials that actually use a clip from a movie as their add. Like a few years ago when Godzilla came out. Kodak used Godzilla’s first run through New York to sell their new disposable camera. iRobot was used in the same way by; I think it was Nesan, to advertise a car. And at times I think Cellular was one big phone ad.

Sometimes it’s actually hard to tell what’s an ad and what’s a movie or show.