If, like me, you were unable to keep your eyes open until 4am on Monday morning, you likely watched the highlights of this year’s Oscars online the following day. Unfortunately, for the advertisers that paid around the $1m-per-slot mark to gain a highly coveted slice of the limelight, this means you missed out on the commercial gaps.

However, the chances are far greater that you will have seen those brands who advertised in the Best Picture nominated movies. Fenton’s Creamery ice cream in Disney’s Up? BMW and Taco Bell in American Football drama The Blind Side? American Airlines, Hilton Hotels or Chrysler in Up In The Air? Ringing any bells?

It’s always quite amusing to survey friends and colleagues on their recollection of product placement on screen – the latter especially given that they work within marketing and are arguably more watchful of brand presence within entertainment platforms. If you mark this against the reality (superbly documented by Brand Channel’s Brand Cameo database), I have found that by and large people’s recall is probably less than 5% of the actual brands exposed on screen.

To make things interesting, those clever Brand Cameo folks have taken the brands present in this year’s Oscar contenders for Best Picture and plotted them on a matrix: pitching memorable versus instantly forgettable, against those that provided significant profit versus those that did not.

Hopefully, they won’t mind me reproducing it in full here:

(c) BrandChannel.com 2010

Now for the really interesting bit. Of those featuring in the most memorable segmentation, both Günther’s in District 9 and RDA that featured in Cameron’s epic Avatar were actually fictional brands.

Having written previously on how events, rights-holders and entertainment platforms are increasingly feeling the need to get a ‘brand stamp of approval’ on their project (even if they have to make one up), I am now more convinced than ever that we all now require a brand presence within our entertainment to validate its grounding in reality.

Though in the case of both District 9 and Avatar, paradoxically the branding was exercised to validate their grounding in un-reality. I guess given their sci-fi nature, it seems to make more sense to create a fictional unknown brand, thereby emphasizing the futuristic setting. But nonetheless, Günther’s and RDA still fall firmly on the ‘memorable’ side of scale – despite their non-existence in our reality.

Was this a missed opportunity for ‘real’ brands? Would South African-born Nando’s or thoroughly American N.A.S.A. have offered anything more? Would the producers have allowed it? Would the brand managers have wanted to association? And would the brand messages have been more – or less – memorable as a result?

I would love to know what goes in to thinking up these fictional companies. Do production execs or screenwriters work in a name that states a subtle (or not-so-subtle) socio-political message to fit with the film’s thematic development? As one District 9 viewer pointed out in a fan forum, sometimes the connotations have more meaning than at first it might appear:

‘Why were the South Africans patrons of a restaurant named Günther’s? Günther is the name of a king of Burgundy and means “warrior” or “soldier.” In effect, the South African blacks had a white warrior to thank for their sustenance.’

Either which way, we are entering an era where commercialism of movies – on and off screen – may fast become the life-blood of the industry; if, in fact we are not there already. How many years before an esteemed member of the Hollywood glitterati stands before the Academy audience and announces, ‘And the Academy Award for Best Product Placement goes to….‘?

Judging by the above, this year it should have gone to a brand that doesn’t even exist.

If this year’s Oscar-winning animated short film Logorama is anything to go by, it won’t be long. For those who have not yet had the pleasure of this little piece, the entire premise is the over-branded commercialisation of modern-day America on film. Watch the trailer below, and try to count the brand logos. There are over 2,500 in the full piece. Utter genius.

By Lucie Bartlett on March 9th, 2010

Tags: Advertising, American football, Brand marketing, Film, Product placement

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 Campaign reports the demise of Sport magazine, concluding that this unfortunate event is the result of the recession. There is no doubt that economic conditions played their part, but they are not wholly responsible. The reason for the fact that general sports titles fail in the UK lies not in the fact that we are, in the words of Sport’s MD Greg Miall, facing “the worst recession in 80 years”, nor in the free distribution model adopted by the magazine, but in the psyche of the UK sports fan.

To illustrate, I draw a comparison between Britain and America. Across the pond resides the great grand-daddy of all general sports titles, Sports Illustrated. This publication carries regular news on all four major US sports and strong coverage of – er – minority sports like NASCAR, golf, football (soccer), tennis and so on. With an audited circulation of around 3m per week, it’s a successful model that many have tried to emulate on this side of the Atlantic. 

Some UK attempts to create a general sports market have been truly outstanding from a journalistic and publishing perspective.Total Sport in the 1990’s was a publishing triumph, a general sports fan’s dream, a commercial disaster. Though constructed very differently, I put Sport in the same high quality category. 

Both magazines failed for the same reason: there are simply not enough “general sports” fans in the UK to sustain a general sports title. This is not the same in the USA, where almost every sports fan is a general sports fan. Britons and Americans consume sports in very different ways.

To illustrate: the American sports fan follows a baseball team, a football team, a basketball team and probably an ice hockey team. This gives him lots to cheer about, all year round. He supersizes his intake by following NCAA teams in all four sports too, so there’s something to watch on telly every single night. Because of the franchise model adopted by most American sports, there’s no promotion or relegation, so he can do this for ever. His interests are well catered for by Sports Illustrated, which knows this market well. 

Contrast this with the UK sports fan. While many of us are perfectly able to observe multiple sports, we generally reserve our passions for only one. We are football fans, or rugby fans, or cricket fans and respectfully observe the breaks between seasons as a rest period in which we allow our enthusiasm to recuperate. To try to address such a collection of individual (and, socio-demographically speaking, quite different) audiences with a single general sports title, is a challenge that so far has proved insurmountable.

Sport in the UK does not unite us; it divides and defines us. It’s unfortunate for Sport magazine, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

By Scott Garrett on April 28th, 2009

Tags: Advertising, American football, Football, Golf, Media

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“The coming together of diametrically differing types of people, all glued to the same pitch or television screen…How can one activity – sport – unite such different strands of humanity?”

- Ed Smith, What Sport Tells Us About Life

All those who have ever dismissed sport as ‘just a game’ would be wise to spend some time absorbing the writings of Ed Smith. In a truly brilliant work on the place of sport within our modern lives, Smith discusses and examines sport in the widest possible context – all in order to learn more about the ‘game’ of life.

But not even he could have imagined how the narrative would play out in New Orleans in 2005/6, when an American football team proved to be the salvation of an entire town from deluge, devastation and ultimate destruction. It was a rare example of when sport not only united disparate strands of humanity, but re-built a completely broken city in the process.

The aptly named New Orleans Saints – the NFL’s Louisiana franchise – hit the UK headlines last week when they brought America’s number one sport to our fair shores, giving up a crucial regular season home game to bring football fever to London. But behind the glitz and glamour of the gridiron show that entertained 82,000 at Wembley, lies an intensely human story.

When Hurricane Katrina violently tore through the soul of Louisiana on 29 August 2005, claiming nearly 2,000 lives and causing $81.2m in damage, one would expect the local football team to be low on the list of priorities. Instead, the New Orleans Saints became the focus of recovery for the city and Katrina’s many thousands of victims.

The giant structure that the Saints had previously called home, the Louisiana Superdome, had been all but destroyed. But because it provided such a central beacon for the community, Louisiana’s then Governor made its restoration a top priority for the city’s relief effort. Doug Thornton, the Superdome’s General Manager, has explained why:

“The dome was a poster child for misery and suffering. We knew if we could turn it around and make it a symbol of rebirth that would provide inspiration and hope for the city and send a message to the rest of the world that New Orleans is back.”

The players themselves became ambassadors for the cause. The Saints’ golden boy, running back Reggie Bush, spearheaded a campaign to rebuild a High School football stadium in City Park, following major damage suffered during the hurricane. The rookie’s significant financial backing to the project came shortly after being drafted by the team and before he had even set foot on a football field as a fully-fledged Saint.

The Times’ Martin Fletcher’s moving experience of his time with the team this summer provides an intense snapshot of the players’ phenomenal efforts to put their city back on the map:

“One player, Joe Horn, was so distressed by the plight of refugees shopping in a Houston Wal-Mart soon after Katrina that he went up to the cashiers, gave them his credit card and said: “Give these people whatever they need.” Another, Ernie Conwell, bought an engagement ring for a man whose distressed wife had lost hers in the storm.

A third, Steve Gleason, bought 2,000 backpacks and filled them with pens and paper for children returning to school. Yet another, Deuce McAllister, takes 100 children shopping each Christmas.

Some players have discreetly slipped cash to hard-up parents so that they can take their children out for a meal.”

Clearly much, much more than a mandatory PR exercise. The numerous gracious, thankful and emotional comments and dedications posted in response to Fletcher’s piece by those who lived through the horror of it all, speak volumes about how vividly he captured the immensity of the Saints’ efforts for their city. As quarterback Drew Brees told him during an interview, fans don’t run up to players and congratulate them on a great game – instead they thank them deeply for being part of the city.

In his book, Ed Smith describes the utter immersion in a sporting spectacle as akin to following a novel’s narrative, ‘sharing a journey, caring deeply about something we cannot change’ – that ultimately, can extend our human sympathy.

The Saints cared so deeply about their extended adopted family of New Orleans that they did all within their power to make sure the narrative of their city was changed. America’s number one sport beat on as the heart of a devastated city, and New Orleans’ very own Saints extended their own human sympathy beyond all expectation.

By Lucie Bartlett on November 3rd, 2008

Tags: American football, NFL, community

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