Thursday, September 23, 2010

Johnnie Walker as Proud of Product Placement as Gecko of Greed

Last night, we went to see the movie Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps and we were greeted by an advertisement that ran nearly 7 minutes long, entitled "The man who walked around the world". It was the Johnnie Walker advertisement, where Scottish actor from Trainspotting, Robert Carlyle, narrates a story about how the Johnnie Walker brand came to be. It may be because I have not been going to the movies all that often but I was surprised at how long the ad was, much longer than the usual 30 second or 1 minute ads.

It wasn't until part way through the movie, everyone laughed when we saw Jake Moore hand the Chinese contingent a bottle of... you guessed it.. Johnnie Walker Blue Label. It seemed to be redefining the meaning of product placement. It seemed just placing the product in the movie was not bold enough, that now you also should consider having a 7 minute advertisement preceding the movie as well. I thought it was good strategy anyway because I walked away with a clear memory of that moment in the movie where entertainment was hijacked by advertising. Borders book stores also featured as product placements in Wall Street.

3 comments:

  1. Yes I noticed both of them in the film- do you think they paid for it to be in there?

    I loved the johnny walker part - learnt something about doing business with the chinese! Yes it did make me laugh a little!

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  2. yeah they paid for it I'm sure. Or Oliver Stone and the producers must be big fans of Johnnie Walker

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