product placement

Ford Selling [Fake] Time-Traveling Flux Capacitor For A Mere $1.2M

Ford Selling [Fake] Time-Traveling Flux Capacitor For A Mere $1.2M

Ever since the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2015, companies have been throwing elbows trying to one-up each other to see who can offer recreations of – and reap the revenues from – products showcased in Back to the Future: Part II: “Pepsi Perfect,” a $10,000 hover board, self-lacing shoes from Nike and more. With just two days to go until Marty McFly’s fateful visit to the future, Ford is getting in on the marketing glory by offering a [fake] flux capacitor.  [More]

(PepsiCo)

Pepsi Selling “Pepsi Perfect” Collectible Soda On The Date Marty McFly Visited 2015 In ‘Back To The Future: Part II’

As it turns out, having your product featured in a major motion picture doesn’t only pay off when the movie first heads to theaters, but it can reap promotional gold for years to come, if you play it right. To that end, Pepsi announced it’s offering a limited quantity of Pepsi Perfect on the day Marty McFly orders a Pepsi in Back to the Future: Part II — Oct. 21, 2015. [More]

Comcast's Universal Studios park is the backdrop for Jerry Springer and other Comcast-tied celebs to cash in on what remains of the Sharknado craze.

Comcast Should Pay You For Sitting Through All Its Product Placement In Sharknado 3

If you’re one of the 1,743 people who are still amused by the whole Sharknado phenomenon, then you should consider yourself warned that the latest entry into the self-consciously trashy TV franchise is apparently not much more than an extended commercial for numerous Comcast-owned brands. [More]

CNN Shows That Microsoft Surface Makes Great $799 iPad Stand

CNN Shows That Microsoft Surface Makes Great $799 iPad Stand

From NFL sidelines to product placement in various movies and TV shows, Microsoft has been making a huge marketing push to get its Surface tablets in the hands of people you see on TV. But what’s that distinctive-looking Surface stand actually propping up? In the case of CNN, it’s probably an iPad. [More]

Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi On Product Placement: “It’s Hard To Make That Sh!t Sound Natural”

Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi On Product Placement: “It’s Hard To Make That Sh!t Sound Natural”

The recent comedy flop The Internship took a lot of flack, and deservedly so, for being a feature-length ad for Google masquerading as a movie. But compared to some product-placement-packed reality TV shows, that film looks like a fiercely independent labor of love. [More]

Google google google google google.

Google Referenced Once Every 2.3 Minutes In ‘The Internship’

Even after our product-placement round-up last week, we still haven’t seen two-hour Google ad called The Internship, and now it’s even less likely that we ever will, as someone who did see it went through and tallied up all the times Google or one of its properties is mentioned in the movie. [More]

Google google google google google.

From The Shameless To The Egregious, We Grade The Product Placements In 12 Ad-Packed Movies

You’ve probably seen the 30-second TV ads promoting that new 2-hour commercial for Google starring those two actors from that other movie that people really liked eight years ago. We’d like to think product placement has sunk to a new low, but every time we’re convinced that advertisers have hit bottom, someone throws them a more powerful digging implement. [More]

In Idiocracy, Starbucks offers "exotic coffee for men."

Sometimes You Don’t Want Your Brand In A Popular Movie

Companies fork over untold piles of cash to have their products featured on a TV show or in a movie — even going so far as to digitally insert ads in the far background of a sitcom rerun, but there are some cases where brands would probably rather not be identified with what viewers are watching. [More]

(me and the sysop)

Budweiser Would Rather Denzel Washington Not Drink Its Beer While Driving In The Movies

Usually corporations are positively begging, by way of advertising dollars, to get their products placed in the movies. But although Denzel Washington might enjoy its beer, Budweiser doesn’t want the actor slugging away at one while driving a car in his new movie Flight. Anheuser-Busch has asked Paramount to either take the Bud logo out or cover it up somehow. [More]

Transformers, Apple Recognized For Their Achievements In Product Placement

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is probably the best Shia LaBeouf movie released in the last year that also features big robots. And while that alone might make it worthy of an award, the film has also been singled out for its efforts to cram brands down viewers’ throats. [More]

Which TV Shows Were The Biggest Product Placement Offenders In 2011?

Which TV Shows Were The Biggest Product Placement Offenders In 2011?

Watching TV has turned into a game of “spot the product placement,” one that isn’t really a game because it’s all too easy to notice when your favorite characters are suddenly touting the video camera capabilities on their cell phones. So who had the most instances of product placement in 2011? [More]

Funeral Home Patrons Find 'Walking Dead' Billboard Offensive For Some Reason

Funeral Home Patrons Find 'Walking Dead' Billboard Offensive For Some Reason

Remarkably, no one at ClearChannel Advertising seems to have realized that it might be a bad idea to post a giant ad for a zombie-themed television program on the exterior wall of a funeral parlor. That’s precisely what happened in the town of Consett in England. The advert for post-apocalyptic drama The Walking Dead has now been taken down, and the company responsible has apologized, but how on earth did this happen in the first place? [More]

Apple Advertised In Almost A Third Of 2010's Blockbusters

Apple Advertised In Almost A Third Of 2010's Blockbusters

If they gave out Oscars for product placement ubiquity, Apple would have taken home the prize Sunday. The company not only does a lot of product placement, but places wise bets on box office winners, beating all competitors by showing up in 10 of the 33 movies that took the top spot at the box office in 2010. [More]

More People Want To Buy Car After It's Used As Slam Dunk Contest Prop

More People Want To Buy Car After It's Used As Slam Dunk Contest Prop

Even though it didn’t put up much defense as Blake Griffin posterized it during Saturday’s NBA slam dunk contest, the Kia Optima became much more desirable after Griffin used it as a prop. [More]

Coors Can To Show Up In PG-Rated Movie

Coors Can To Show Up In PG-Rated Movie

Even though Coors Brewing Company didn’t pay Walt Disney Pictures to place a beer can in the PG-rated movie Tron: Legacy, the can still ended up in there somehow. Whether or not Coors masterminded the appearance, one could argue that Coors is marketing its beer to underage viewers. [More]

Walmart Wants You To Get Liquored Up For Back-To-School Shopping

Walmart Wants You To Get Liquored Up For Back-To-School Shopping

I found these plastic shot glasses nestled among the crayons and glue sticks in the back-to-school section of my local Walmart. I’m not sure what it implies. Do college students use Elmer’s Glue now?

My friend with several school-aged children saw it differently, noting, “That might be what I need to survive back to school shopping.” For the parents. Brilliant.

Walgreens Wants You To Play Beer Pong

Walgreens Wants You To Play Beer Pong

Someone at Steve’s Walgreens knows that marketing table tennis balls to beer pong users is smart business. The little suckers have a way of getting lost amid the drunken mayhem of late-night competitions, so beer pong players make excellent repeat customers. [More]

One-Stop Shopping For Beer Pong

One-Stop Shopping For Beer Pong

Gibson snapped this photo at an Oregon Quality Food Center that seems to indicate the aisle stocker did some time at frat parties. He wishes he’d noticed the display before he went out of his way to buy ping pong balls. [More]