Quantum of Annoyance--When Product Placement Goes Horribly Wrong
My wife and I watched the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace a week or so ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. As you might guess from my frequent references to Bond, I am a fan of the franchise--and while I occasionally miss the humor and campiness of the Roger Moore movies, I overwhelmingly approve of the franchise reboot. The series badly needed more realistic villains and a darker, more dangerous Bond, and the last two movies have delivered.
As good as Quantum of Solace was, though, all of its goodness was nearly unraveled by Ford's product placement whitewash. It didn't start out badly--the movie began with a thrilling car chase that featured Bond piloting a gorgeous Aston Martin. Even setting aside from Bond's history with the marque, Aston Martin is the perfect Bond car--muscular, debonair, slightly threatening, and thoroughly English. Aside from the fact that the company is owned by Ford, of course. (EDIT: Partially owned by Ford, that is. Ford sold all but a small stake last year. Thanks to the commenters for reminding me--I thought Ford still had a bigger stake.)
Likewise, I could buy that Bond would drive a Land Rover--it is a believable Bond vehicle, especially for off-road situations. Again, Land Rover is a Ford property. I even enjoyed the novelty of seeing a motorcycle chasing down an electric subcompact--a electric subcompact Ford Ka, naturally.
Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. As the movie went on, the Ford placement got more and more blatant, to the point where we saw the evil mastermind being driven around in a convoy of black Ford Edges. I don't have anything against the Edge--it's a nice-looking mid-size SUV--but I have difficulty accepting it as the preferred vehicle of an impossibly wealthy and powerful villain. I mean, this is a guy who pals around with powerful generalissimos at lavish parties and pulls the strings of the rich and powerful. And he's chauffeured in a Ford Edge? Really? If it must be a Ford product, why not another Land Rover? Or a Jaguar? Or why not get wacky and put the villain in a Maverick Grabber?
This may not seem like a big deal, but to a car guy, a Bond movie featuring only Ford products is like a drama movie featuring only people who, for no good reason, are all dressed in identical red leotards. It's completely unreal in a way that is incredibly distracting and destroys my willingness to suspend disbelief. And while it's true that these movies are packed with unrealistic events, excessive product placement is an unreality that actually undermines the movie's plot. By the end of the movie I cared less about what was going on with Bond and more about wondering which Ford product would show up next.
My wife is a noted automotive agnostic. Unless it's a Volvo 240 or Jeep Cherokee, she actually goes out of her way to not know or care about cars. When even she noticed and commented on the preponderance of Fords in Quantum of Solace, I knew it was excessive.
Even so, this isn't the most gratuitous example of automotive product placement I've seen, or even the most over-the-top Bond movie placement. My picks are below, but I'm sure I've missed some classics.
Most Gratuitous Movie Placement
The level of automotive product placement in The Matrix Reloaded completely dwarfs the Ford marathon in Quantum of Solace. In fact, it's not even close.
The Matrix in the film is a virtual reality created by our computer overlords that serves as a mental cage for the human race. It's not related to the Toyota Matrix, though whenever I ride in my friend's Toyota Matrix I have to suppress my desire to beatbox electronic music and speak like Lawrence Fishburne.
There is a scene in Reloaded, the second movie of the trilogy, in which some of our heroes are caught in the Matrix and pursued on a virtual freeway by various evil computer programs in the form of human-looking bad guys. Of course, mayhem ensues. The 10-minute-long freeway chase is an astonishingly ambitious action set-piece, it's fantastically entertaining, and ... every car involved is a GM vehicle.
Yes, that's right--about 10 minutes of movie time are completely dominated by GM products.Our heroes drive a Cadillac CTS; they are pursued by a Cadillac Escalade EXT and a bunch of Chevrolet police cars. The police cars are particularly unlikely--some are ancient Caprice Classics, and the rest are the too-small 2000-2005 Impalas that weren't particularly beloved by police departments. The rest of the cars on the freeway are Saturn wagons, Oldsmobile Intrigues, Pontiac Grand Ams, Chevy trucks and SUVs, minivans--virtually the entire GM catalog is represented. There are a few older GM products as well--an older Chevy pickup, and, as the prominent "outsider" car driven by some other good guys, a first-generation classic Pontiac Firebird.
I didn't exactly do a frame-by-frame review, but I have watched the video intently a few times now. Non-GM cars show up before the chase reaches the freeway; and once on the freeway we see some semi trucks, a prominently displayed Ducati motorcycle, and a Dodge Ram pickup that sticks out like a sore thumb. Otherwise, though, it's all GM.
The real world is populated by lots of different types of cars--different makes, different models, different ages, different conditions. A freeway filled with only new GM products is completely unnatural. And it's not just a few cars--a little research turns up the fact that GM donated 300 vehicles for use in the scene, and I believe it.
As with the Ford placement in Quantum, the whole thing is incredibly unlikely and, for me, horribly distracting. I can almost give the Matrix a pass because it's meant to be unreal--a computer-generated representation of the real world created to enslave humanity. But even this doesn't hold much water. Are we supposed to believe our computer overlords are only capable of rendering GM cars? If so, the Matrix is an even more horrifying place than previously imagined.
Unintended Consequence: I'm not sure this is what GM was going for, but if the producers wanted to pick bland, generic cars to blend into the background, early 2000s GM vehicles were the perfect choice.
This isn't the first time we've seen an all-GM freeway--In researching the Reloaded placement, I stumbled across a post describing an all-1973 Chevy Caprice freeway in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die. As you can see in the image, it's also wildly unnatural, though given my automotive tastes I find it completely fantastic.
If a freeway populated with Oldsmobile Silhouettes and Pontiac Grand Ams is hell for a person like me, a freeway filled with 1970s Impalas and Caprices is clearly heaven. If they were going for blatant unreality, why didn't the producers of The Matrix Reloaded choose to fill their freeway with 1973 Caprices? That at least would have been highly original.
The Matrix Reloaded freeway chase scene is broken into two sections below. Caution--the videos feature mature language, violence, offensive product placement, and a whole lot of assorted Matrix-related weirdness.
Most Gratuitous TV Placement
My wife and I were huge fans of the TV show Alias--its action, wackiness, and anything-goes mythology made it a gripping show into which we could totally sink ourselves. Thanks to the magic of TV on DVD, we would watch episode after episode, sinking ourselves into the entertaining espionage and counter-espionage of Sydney Bristow and her partner in crime prevention, Michael Vaughan.
That is, until we came across the 14th episode of the third season--Blowback. A few minutes into the episode, Sydney and Vaughan were chasing down some faceless double agents, one of which, unbeknownst to Vaughan, was Vaughan's wife. The pursuit led Sydney and Vaughan through a building, up the stairs, and into the top level of a parking garage, at which point they see the bad guys screaming away in a stolen Ford Mustang.
Sydney looks around and chirps, "Quick, get the F-150!"* The camera then zooms in on the F-150 fender logo before the burly F-150 pushes some other cars out of the way (other Fords, of course) and sets off in chase.
This was the apparent culmination to a season-long plot thread, a dramatic moment bringing to a head Vaughan's wife's betrayal and potentially revealing to our heroes the shadowed enemy they had been chasing for the previous 13 episodes.
"Quick, get the F-150!?" Really? That's the best they could do in that situation? With that one line and the camera zoom on the F-150 logo, the producers took a blowtorch both to their own credibility and to our willingness to suspend our disbelief for this show.
In the moments after Sydney uttered that infamous and completely unlikely line, my wife and I shared a moment of shocked silence and then at least 30 seconds of derisive laughter. I understand that when the episode aired on broadcast TV, a Ford F-150 commercial led off every commercial break--we would have greeted those commercials with the same cynical laughter.
We continued to watch Alias, but we never felt quite the same about the show after that moment. As with Bond and the Matrix movies, I was used to dealing with unreality in Alias; it's part of the show's appeal. But this unreality had nothing to do with the show's mythology or quirky charm. The producers had put an advertisement above their viewers and the credibility of their own show.
And, to be honest, the placement did the F-150 no favors in our household either. It's not as if I am in the F-150 target demographic anyway, but now there's no way I will never buy one. And even if I did, I know my wife would ridicule me with "Quick, get the F-150!" jokes before every trip to the supermarket.
Unintended Consequences: First, Ford products are apparently incredibly easy to steal. Second, the Mustang is evidently worthless as a performance car. The Mustang has a lot of apparent advantages over an F-150 in a parking garage race--lighter weight, more power, better handling--and in this case, the Mustang had a head start of at least 20-30 seconds. Yet the F-150 caught it within seconds. Why would I want to buy a muscle car that performs so much more poorly than a full-size pickup truck? If Ford had really been thinking, they would have put the baddies in a Camaro and let viewers draw their own conclusions.
I am a helpful guy, and so I have been thinking of three acceptable alternate scenarios that would have salvaged the show's credibility.
1. Play up the absurdity of the placement
In this case, one way to rescue the absurd it to make it so over-the-top that it's clear the producers and writers are as disgusted as the viewer.
For example, Vaughan could have stared right into the camera and said in a deadpan voice, "Absolutely, Sydney, and it's a great choice. After all, the F-150 has been America's best-selling vehicle since 1992."
Also acceptable would have been the absurdly specific reference ("Quick! Get the F-150 Extended Cab Harley Davidson Edition with the 5.4-liter Triton V-8!") or a reference to an old car whose sales don't benefit Ford at all ("Quick! Get the Ford Escort EXP!").
2. Ridicule the placement
In this scenario, after Sydney chirps, "Quick! Get the F-150!" Vaughan stops running and fixes Sydney with a silent, derisive, mocking stare for a minimum of 30 long seconds. Ideally, Sydney flushes with shame under Vaughan's reproachful stare, and she looks completely deflated as they silently get into a different, non-Ford vehicle.
This is probably my favorite of the three alternate scenarios.
3. The placement works out poorly
Sydney and Vaughan jump into the F-150, but they lag badly behind the Mustang. They pull to a stop after losing the Mustang, defeated with the knowledge that selecting a pickup truck to follow a performance car through a parking garage was an abjectly awful idea.
Part of the episode in question is archived in the video below; skip ahead to the 2:50 mark to see the moment of shame
* Video review shows that she actually just said "The F-150!", but I prefer my version.
--Chris H.
...m... on December 03, 2008 at 01:43 AM
...come now, ford cut loose aston nearly two years ago and only holds about an eight percent stake these days...
Brian on December 03, 2008 at 02:23 AM
Chris: the gift that keeps on giving!! Honestly I think I like it when you're kind of ticked at the cars -- makes it a little personal. By the way, I think that Ford has relinquished Aston Martin, most of Mazda, and Volvo may be in the hands of Swedes again very soon.
As an F-150 owner I can tell you that it's certainly not a tool for banging your way out of a parking garage, but when it gets cold and I mean really cold (-30F or lower) that damn thing will start & take you to work without fail. Good for hauling some lumber, or riding out an apocalypse.
And thanks for the Cherokee link -- just got the wife a Laredo.
Mike on December 03, 2008 at 04:29 AM
Aston Martin has not been owned by Ford since March of 2007
Cookie the Dog's Owner on December 03, 2008 at 05:10 AM
The one consolation in the Alias clip is the total destruction of that Oldsmobile Gutless Ci-Error (or is it a Chevy Celebrity?) at the 4:09 mark.
...m... on December 03, 2008 at 05:44 AM
re: mazda and volvo
...well, if we're going to be technical about recent divestitures, jaguar and landrover were to be let go around the same time as aston, but to be fair quantum of solace was well into production by the time their sale was completed this june...
...aston martin, however, were independent a full month before the first draft script was written...
epilonious on December 03, 2008 at 06:18 AM
It makes me think of the Knight Rider pilot and subsequent show... with the worlds fastest Edge keeping up with the KITT 3000.
Chris Hafner on December 03, 2008 at 08:02 AM
Thanks for the heads-up, guys - I knew Ford sold some of the company, but I thought they still owned more than they do. I edited to specify partially owned by Ford.
And yep, M, Jag and Land Rover were still part of the Ford family when the movie was made.
All of this makes the placement even more wince-inducing in a way - Ford got the obligatory Aston Martin shot out of the way up front, then spent the rest of the movie giving us Ford Kas and Edges.
Chris Hafner on December 03, 2008 at 08:05 AM
epilonius: "It makes me think of the Knight Rider pilot and subsequent show... with the worlds fastest Edge keeping up with the KITT 3000."
This has always bugged me about car chases. For the car chase to work, the two cars must be of roughly similar speed, but the cars they use just aren't. Bullitt is the most famous example - the bad guys drove a Hemi Charger, and Steve McQueen drove a Mustang. The Hemi Charger was way, way faster than the Mustang, and the driver of the Charger had to take it easy to allow the Mustang to keep up.
Even when I was a kid, I wondered about the Dukes of Hazzard. If the General Lee was so fast, why did it seem to be exactly the same speed as all of the police cars? Or, even more worrying, Daisy Duke's Jeep? Or uncle Jessie's Ford pickup truck? Every vehicle in Hazzard County was exactly the same speed.
Chris Hafner on December 03, 2008 at 08:07 AM
Brian: "Honestly I think I like it when you're kind of ticked at the cars -- makes it a little personal."
Yeah, those are usually more fun to write. :-) I'm so happy with cars so much of the time that it's fun to dabble with the dark side now and again.
Brian: "And thanks for the Cherokee link -- just got the wife a Laredo."
Ooh, cool. Have you sold the 924 yet?
J on December 03, 2008 at 09:19 AM
Re: Alias v. F150
I remember having the same laugh-out-loud reaction. Not bothering to watch the clip again, didn't they have what seemed like 2 or 3 minutes of chase, with LOTS of head-on shots of the vehicles & their prominant Ford logos? Sickening.
Anthony Cagle on December 03, 2008 at 09:55 AM
I think all the Bond movies were like that. "The Man With the Golden Gun" (one of the really good Moore ones, IMO) had Scaramanga driving the Matador you profiled earlier, and a Hornet that did the famous corkscrew stunt.
I like the way the Austin Powers series did it; they made it obvious they were doing product placement.
Odd though how this has worked out. Product sponsorship and placement used to be obvious and accepted, and then it seemed to go underground and we all end up shocked that product placement is so. . . .obvious.
John B on December 03, 2008 at 09:55 AM
Okay, it seems I'm a bit older than some of you.
I first noticed auto product placement on Bewitched.
It wasn't bad that Sam and Darrin drove Chevys...brand loyalty was the norm in the 60s...but the fact that EVERY car parked on their street was also a new Chevy didn't go unnoticed by my young mind.
Chris Hafner on December 03, 2008 at 10:35 AM
Anthony Cagle: "I think all the Bond movies were like that."
Absolutely - and your example of The Man With the Golden Gun is a good one. As much as I love AMCs, the AMC whitewash during that portion of that movie was definitely unreal. It was almost so absurd - James Bond in an AMC? - that it was part of the charm of a campy movie, but it was pretty blatant.
Product placement has definitely always been around, and I don't mind it when it is believable and makes sense. Bond wearing nice watches, drinking good liquor, driving nice cars, dressed in designer clothes - all that I believe. It's positive placement, in a way - it enhances the mythology. No problems there.
Bond driving an AMC Spirit, drinking Coors, wearing a Seiko watch, and dressed in clothes from TJ Maxx ... well, that's product placement that doesn't fit and is distracting. Having a super-villain convoyed in a Ford Edge isn't *that* bad, but it's obvious why the car is in the movie, and it's not because that's what the writer wanted.
Steaming Pile on December 03, 2008 at 12:03 PM
@John B - Lots of 60s sitcoms were like that. You would even see a plug during the closing credits like, "automobiles furnished by Chrysler Corporation." Mr. Drysdale drove a New Yorker, and Miss Hathaway drove some kind of Plymouth convertible. The only non-Chrysler in the show was Jed's truck.
OldCarGuy on December 03, 2008 at 12:24 PM
Chris Hafner: "This has always bugged me about car chases. For the car chase to work, the two cars must be of roughly similar speed, but the cars they use just aren't."
Heh. One of my favorite examples is in "Patriot Games," when the lovely Anne Archer in her Porsche 911 is being chased by terrorists in a Ford E-150 van. Granted, the scene takes place on a freeway in heavy traffic, but c'mon Anne! Be a little more creative! Use everything that 911 has to offer: acceleration, handling, and yes, the brakes! Perhaps she is just a little too delicate. Or maybe Jack Ryan should've sent her to Porsche Sport Driving School. Sheeesh.
Anthony Cagle on December 03, 2008 at 12:30 PM
IIRC, I believe Bond swiped the Hornet from a dealership to go after Scaramanga, so I think it at least works on a minimal level.
Apparently, the corkscrew stunt has never been replicated, though I don't know why, it seems like it would be simple physics. The stunt guy who did it (he did it several times in car shows as well) swears there's some big secret to it and that he will take it to the grave with him.
So both me and Hafner are Bond geeks, OKAY??!!! HAPPY NOW??!!!
ian on December 03, 2008 at 01:04 PM
I agree wholeheartedly with what you are saying.
I believe at the bottom of this brand recognition is the fact that television is so loaded with these type of adverts.
Subliminally they work so well,
our unwanted depth of the car advetising catalogue is transferred from the small screen where it is annoying enough, to the big screen where it becomes a nightmare
the drawn out mini movie advertisement playing out within the movie usually at critical or high action points in the script.
It is so difficult to not become annoyed especially when you are looking forward to a good movie where we enjoy the good guys,love the ladies and pulse along with the adventure.
So to be rudely brought back to the car dealership as it were is so detrimental to some movies,that we do come away internally fuming about more adverts creeping into our subconcious once again,on a far larger and therefore far more annoying level.
Great article,
Ian.
Kyle Novak on December 03, 2008 at 01:18 PM
I saw the new documentary Blue Gold : World Water Wars at Vancouver Film Festival. It depicts the real-life Bond water villains securing fresh water for personal gain at any costs. Lives have been lost and the water wars have begun, so I'm glad Bond is tackling real villains. You should check out the doc which tells some stories much more terrifying than Mr. Greene. www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com
That Car Guy on December 03, 2008 at 01:40 PM
Many moons ago, MAD Magazine did a parody of "The F.B.I.", a rather decent 60s TV show. To poke fun at that program's vehicle placement, in the parody, a Native American was named "Chief LTD Thunderbird". Now who could have possibly supplied the cars for that show?
Bond drove a Land Rover (Or Range Rover, I can't tell them apart) in Octopussy. As far as putting Bond in a car he doesn't belong in, how can we forget the great 2CV chase in "For Your Eyes Only"? I read that Citroen even made a limited edition "007" yellow 2CV with fake bullet holes. How cool is that?
BTW, the guys who did the Hornet jump are keeping their secrets so nobody will try to copy them, at least with their info. Smart idea for these sue-happy days.
Rob the SVX Guy on December 03, 2008 at 01:55 PM
I saw it, and honestly at least it was the unattainable euro fords. I didn't bother me at all, since they weren't numerous and blatent about it. The matrix movies top the list of most annoying GM ridiculousness... it really detracted from the chase, it looked so ... strange. Gee. All GM vehicles are new and shiny. Anything non GM is dirty and old.
Transformers was even worse, actually. God. Talk about ruining a classic childhood thing with advertising.
That Car Guy on December 03, 2008 at 01:57 PM
P.S. I'm proud to say I'm a huge Bond geek too... stay tuned LOL.
Anthony Cagle on December 03, 2008 at 03:38 PM
I'd like to personally thank Chris for that top photo.
I mean, that's a really *nice*. . . uhhhhhh. . . .car there. ("Car? There's a car there?")
Mochi Mochi on December 03, 2008 at 04:12 PM
i'm with rob on this one. seeing euro fords always makes me happy. it allows me to dream that someday you might even be able to buy one here. so i cut the ford/bond product placement some slack. but it really is a little too obvious.
Shawn on December 03, 2008 at 04:21 PM
LOL. You've touched on a topic near and dear to my heart. I ALWAYS notice correct or incorrect uses of cars in movies or tv shows. Here's a few of my recent observations:
1. Quantum of Solace really bugged me as I was watching it with the excessive Fords. However, in the movies' defense there was a bit of a twist to those Ford Edge's that the bad guy and his posse drove. They were HYDROGEN Ford Edge prototype models. They had small decals on them that I noticed in the close up shots much like a hybrid car would have (for maximum smug factor). This made it slightly believable since the bad guy was an energy guru/thief and I believe the *SPOILER* final battle was in a hydrogen powered building.
2. Rob beat me to the punch in mentioning Transformers (which I didn't see). But the movie was spoiled for me as soon as I learned it was all GM cars that the robots turned into. I fondly remember playing with Transformers toys that turned into either a VW Beetle or a Nissan 300ZX.
3. One of the best car-centric movies of late is Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. Lots of proper muscle cars and car chatter. However, there is a chase late in the movie that opens up to a busy traffic scene that contains nearly all late model GM cars. Very disappointing that this scene was compromised.
4. However, the ultimate thing that irks me in movies or tv shows is when the chosen cars are not period correct for the setting of the production. I would watch The Wonder Years (set in the late '60's) regularly as a child. They would usually get it right with lots of car lust-worthy models on display. One episode that always sticks out was when Kevin was riding his bicycle through the neighborhood and an early '80's Ford LTD was parallel parked on the street in the background. It made me furious!! There are many more examples of this by lazy directors/set designers that I won't point out now.
monolith on December 03, 2008 at 07:31 PM
Argh! I also loved Alias, and it was also a horrible vehicle product placement scene that heart-breakingly made the show jump the shark for me -- but a different scene, later in the series.
Jack, if I remember correctly, brings Nadia back to life after a season-long "can she be saved?" plotline. They narrowly escape in - of course - a Ford vehicle. After being dead for several weeks, what is the first thing she says to Jack?
Nadia: Thanks, Jack. I see you finally got a Ford Hybrid.
Jack: Quiet. Fast. What's not to like?
Ruined. The. Show. Forever.