Product Placement Gone Wild

Everyone is becoming more and more cognisant about what they call "product placement" in movies and TV shows. That's where some readily recognizable brand of product is either used by a character or appears in a scene. It's a very subtle - and effective - form of branding that carries an implied endorsement. It's been around a long time, but with the way people are doing their best to avoid traditional advertising these days, it's become increasingly important to marketers to get their products displayed in alternative ways.

This brings me to the recent film, Fracture, starring Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling. I wanted to see it when it first came out, but just didn't get around to it. I really enjoy Sir Anthony - especially when he plays a bad guy - and the previews looked great! So I rented it and watched it last night. It's a very well done suspense thriller with lots of great dialog, interesting characters and some cool courtroom action. It's full of all sorts of plot holes and a few too many twists, but was very engrossing - with one MAJOR exception.

Obviously Apple computer continued its onslaught of Hollywood with its blatant product placement in this film. I don't know if someone at Apple has an incredible "in" with the Hollywood creative crowd, or if the folks who make movies just simply love Apple, but it's amazing how many recent films show the famous bite-out-of-the-apple logo on screen. In Fracture they went to extremes!

First of all, the lead character played by Gosling, is a fast-track lawyer with the Los Angeles prosecutor's office. As he gets ready to go to work in the morning, they cut to a closeup of him inserting his Apple laptop into its case before he heads out the door. I mean this was a complete and full setup that the filmmakers had to spend significant time and money to do, simply to clearly show the logo as the computer is packed up.

Later we see this same laptop on his desk in the office, but it gets worse. The police use Apples, the bad guy has a Mac on his desk, which he left open before going off to go kill his wife so we can easily see the logo, and even the judge during the trial has an open Mac on her bench so that everyone in the courtroom can clearly see what kind of computer she uses!

The problem with all of this is that, first of all, I highly doubt the L.A. prosecutor's office uses Apple laptops, and I really don't know if many judges keep an open laptop on their bench during a trial. If they do, again, I seriously doubt it's a Mac. And because the filmmakers made all of these appearances so incredibly obvious, to me it seriously hurt the credibility and believability of the movie. They went too far. Fracture became a running Apple Mac commercial more than a tight psychological thriller.

I just wonder what they got in return for ruining their movie. When product placement stops being subtle, I think it also stops being effective. My reaction to the use of so many Macs in this film - and I happen to like Macintosh computers a lot - is highly negative. Too much. Stop it! Let me enjoy the film without you hitting me in the face with an Apple logo every few minutes. I almost expected the "Hello, I'm a Mac" guy to pop up and say something.

Time to back off a bit. Everyone will benefit.