Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/23/apple_tops_in_2010_product_placement/
Apple 'outstrips' all brands at box office
Product-placement king
Posted in Hardware, 23rd February 2011 06:01 GMT
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
Apple may not sell the number-one personal computer, but it does lead in one important metric of consumer culture: movie product placement.
"Apple products appeared in 30% of all films that were number one at the US box office in 2010, outstripping product placements by any other single brand," the brand-trackers at Brandchannel [1] reported on Tuesday in the tenth annual Brandcameo Product Placement Awards [2].
Brandchannel mentions only one number-one film that contained Apple products – the critically reamed Sex and the City 2 [3], but it does call out a full fifty 2009-2010 films in which Apple kit appeared but which didn't make it to number one in the US, including such cinematic masterpieces as Dinner for Schmucks [4], Sorority Row [5], Vampires Suck [6], and Road Trip: Beer Pong [7].
Although Apple handily beat tied-for-second-place Nike, Chevrolet, and Ford in product pimping placement, its lead is slipping. In 2009 it appeared in 44 per cent of number-one movies, and in 2008 it peaked at almost 50 per cent: 20 of 41 of that year's top flicks featured Apple products.
Other non-Apple product-placement news from Brandchannel:
- Iron Man 2 [8] had the most branded products appearing onscreen – 64 – an achievement that Brandchannel called "a veritable brandstravaganza."
- Glock handguns appeared in a full 22 of 2010's number-one flicks, a stat that may say more about the American love affair with lead-spitters than it does about the savvy of Glock's marketing department.
- 2010 was a down year for product names appearing in movie titles, with the only two contenders being the misspelled I Love You, Phillip Morris [9] and the somewhat questionably included Elektra Luxx [10]. The Reg yearns for the greasy glory days of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle [11].
Apple's lead is understandable. Love the company's products or hate them, there's no denying that they're associated in moviegoers' minds with the hip and stylish – and with the meteoric rise of the photogenic iPad, The Reg predicts that Apple kit will fare even better in 2011's Brandcameo Product Placement Awards.
And – just possibly – some enterprising scriptwriter is at this very moment shopping a high-concept treatment around Hollywood entitled "Woz 3D". The mind reels. ®
Links
- http://www.brandchannel.com/home/
- http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2011/02/22/2010-Brandcameo-Product-Placement-Awards.aspx
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sex_and_the_city_2/
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dinner_for_schmucks/
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sorority_row/
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/vampires_suck/
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/road_trip_beer_pong/
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/iron_man_2/
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/i_love_you_phillip_morris/
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/elektra-luxx/
- http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/harold_and_kumar_go_to_white_castle/