10700: This Bud’s Not For You.

From The New York Post…

Budweiser wants logo removed from ‘Flight’

From ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES — Denzel Washington’s character in “Flight” drinks a lot throughout the film, but his portrayal of a highly functioning alcoholic pilot isn’t going down well with brewing company Anheuser-Busch or the distributor of Stolichnaya vodka.

Anheuser-Busch said Monday that it has asked Paramount Pictures Corp. to obscure or remove the Budweiser logo from the film, which at one point shows Washington’s character drinking the beer while behind the wheel.

Budweiser is hardly the only alcoholic beverage shown in “Flight,” which earned $25 million in its debut weekend and is likely to remain popular with audiences. Washington’s character frequently drinks vodka throughout the film, with several different brands represented. William Grant & Sons, which distributes Stolichnaya in the United States, also said it didn’t license its brand for inclusion in the film and wouldn’t have given permission if asked.

Although product placement, where companies pay producers to have their brands seen on-camera, have become ubiquitous in movies and television, experts say studios are not obligated to get permission before featuring a product in their work.

Rob McCarthy, vice president of Budweiser, wrote in a statement to The Associated Press that the company wasn’t contacted by Paramount or the production company of director Robert Zemeckis for permission to use the beer in “Flight.”

“We would never condone the misuse of our products, and have a long history of promoting responsible drinking and preventing drunk driving,” McCarthy wrote. “We have asked the studio to obscure the Budweiser trademark in current digital copies of the movie and on all subsequent adaptations of the film, including DVD, On Demand, streaming and additional prints not yet distributed to theaters.”

A spokesman for Zemeckis referred questions to Paramount, which did not return an email message seeking comment.

James Curich, a spokesman for Stoli distributor William Grant & Sons, said the company has a strict code for how the vodka is portrayed in films and is committed to marketing it responsibly. “Considering the subject matter of this film, it is not something in which we would have participated,” he wrote in an email.

Despite the companies’ dissatisfaction with their inclusion in the film, experts say there is little they can do about it legally.

Trademark laws “don’t exist to give companies the right to control and censor movies and TV shows that might happen to include real-world items,” said Daniel Nazer, a resident fellow at Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project. “It is the case that often filmmakers get paid by companies to include their products. I think that’s sort of led to a culture where they expect they’ll have control. That’s not a right the trademark law gives them.”

Jay Dougherty, a professor at Loyola Law School, said the use of brands in films has generally been protected by the courts, even when the companies aren’t pleased with the portrayals.

“It wouldn’t have been as effective a film if they used a bunch of non-generic brands,” said Dougherty, who is also the director of the school’s Entertainment & Media Law Institute. “In a normal situation, if the alcohol were just there as a smaller part of the movie, they might have created an artificial brand for it.”

Other vodka brands, including Absolut and Smirnoff, are also included in the film. Representatives of those companies did not return messages seeking comment.

Paramount has some experience with a company upset with its inclusion in a film. In 2003 the studio won a case after the makers of the “Slip ‘N Slide” sued over the use of the product in the film “Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star.”

In that case, a court found that requiring Paramount to alter the film and its marketing would “generate more hardship than it alleviates.”

Dougherty and Mark Partridge, a Chicago intellectual property lawyer, also noted that a court rejected an effort to get by Caterpillar Inc. to get its logo removed from tractors driven by the villains in 2003’s “George of the Jungle 2.” The company had argued its trademark was harmed by having its product associated with the film’s villains.

Partridge said with the explosion of product placement in recent years, a company might try to make an argument that by the brand appearing in a film, the audience assumed it had granted permission. “You’d have to have proof that people actually making an association and believing it was authorized,” he said.

“It might be a different world,” he said, adding, “I still think it’s an uphill haul.”

10606: Political Product Placement Pizza.

From The Chicago Tribune…

Pizza Hut stunt a pie in the face of debate decorum?

Reuters

During the next presidential debate, the candidates will be pondering the important questions of our time. But the most controversial may be “Sausage or pepperoni?”

Pizza Hut is offering a lifetime of free pizza—one large pie a week for 30 years—or a check for $15,600 to anyone who poses the question to either President Barack Obama or Republican candidate Mitt Romney during the live Town Hall-style debate next Tuesday.

The proposed stunt, which the pizza chain announced Tuesday, threatens to tick off millions of viewers who are expected to tune in to the debate to hear what the candidates have to say about the economy, health care and other serious concerns facing this country.

“It’s a terrible waste of time for the presidential candidates, the people who organize the debate and everyone who wants to listen,” said Mickey Sheridan, a 43-year-old bartender from Queens, N.Y., who is a Pizza Hut fan. “They should find some other way to advertise.”

Pizza Hut’s move comes as marketers continue to look for new ways to engage TV audiences that increasingly are resistant to their traditional commercials. It’s also happening at a time when Americans are paying closer attention to presidential debates. On Oct. 3, an estimated 67.2 million people watched the first debate between Obama and Romney, the largest TV audience for a presidential debate since 1992, according to Nielsen’s ratings service.

It’s not the first time a question that could be seen as frivolous has been asked of a president or candidate during a live, televised events. One of the most famous moments in TV history came during a 1994 MTV Town Hall when an audience member asked then-President Bill Clinton whether he wore “Boxers or briefs?” Clinton’s sheepish response, “Usually briefs,” became an indelible moment in pop culture.

But such moments don’t always end well. During Obama’s 2009 State of the Union address, for instance, South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson yelled out “You lie, you lie.” Wilson quickly apologized but was widely criticized by members of both parties for the breach of decorum.

“I think people are frustrated with the political process, but they don’t want it to become a zoo,” said Allen Adamson, managing director of branding firm Landor Associates in New York.

It can be even more difficult for marketers to get away with such outbursts. While companies long have used hot political topics to gain publicity for their brands, it can backfire. For example, there was backlash in February 2011 when Kenneth Cole compared the Arab Spring uprisings to a frenzy over the U.S. designer’s spring collection. The company later apologized.

“Context really matters,” said Deborah Mitchell, clinical professor of marketing at Ohio State University. “Political satire is fine if it’s in the context of where people are expecting it. When context is violated that’s when you run into trouble.”

Even if Pizza Hut’s stunt doesn’t turn off viewers, Laura Ries, president of Atlanta-based brand strategy firm Ries and Ries, said it still will likely fail. That’s because it does not substantially connect back to the Pizza Hut brand.

“The problem is that it’s too contrived; it’s completely made up,” she said. “For something to move past silly gimmick and become more successful brand connection, it does have to have some sort of relevance.”

To its critics, Pizza Hut, a unit of Louisville, Ky.-based Yum Brands Inc., said there is room for both serious and lighthearted questions in the debate, which will be broadcast on most network and cable news stations.

“We know there are a lot of serious topics that are going to be debated and need to be debated,” Pizza Hut spokesman Doug Terfehr said.

But Terfehr said the pizza chain, which operates 10,000 restaurants in 90 countries, saw this as a way to ask an “everyday question” that people can relate to. “Pizza seems to be a question everyone understands.”

John Dunn, 51, a manager of a data center from North Carolina, said Pizza Hut’s question is one that should not be asked during the presidential debate. “This election means a lot to me,” he said. “I’d rather ask them a more important question if I actually had the opportunity to ask a presidential candidate a question.”

To be sure, because of rules governing the debate, Pizza’s Hut stunt may not even be possible. The first Town Hall-style presidential debate was in 1992 and there were not many rules, which made for a lively debate, says Alan Schroeder, a professor of journalism at Northeastern University and author of “Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV.”

But since then, campaigns have added many restrictions in their negotiations in the way audience members can ask questions. The terms for this year haven’t been made public, but in the past, Schroeder notes that audience members have had to arrive early and write out their questions on notecards, with the moderator selecting among the questions that got the green light.

Even if someone attempts to ask the “Sausage or pepperoni?” question, it’s likely they would get immediately shut down. That’s because in 2004, campaigns negotiated a rule that an audience member’s microphone would be cut off if they start to veer from pre-determined questions.

In any case, Schroeder, the journalism professor, said he doesn’t think anyone who makes it into the debate audience will dare pose the question to the candidates.

“It’s so unseemly, for a lifetime of free pizzas, to make a fool out of themselves in front of millions of people,” he said. “They’d have to give a partial ownership of the company for that.”

8380: Pushing Product Placement.

From USA TODAY…

Morgan Spurlock brings his ‘Greatest Story Ever Sold’ to Sundance

By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

After the premiere of The Greatest Story Ever Sold at the Sundance Film Festival Saturday, many of the corporate sponsors featured in the film trooped up on stage to join director Morgan Spurlock, who wore a suit emblazoned with their brand names and logos.

The documentary is an exploration of product placement and is financed entirely by product placement.

Jumping off a point made by academic experts who said advertisers try to make consumers feel they can’t be happy without a certain product, Spurlock announced: “I’m 40% happier.”

The sponsors represented included Pom juice, Jet Blue, Ban deodorant, Mini Cooper, Hyatt hotels and the island of Aruba.

“We tried to get money from everybody,” said Spurlock. “We called 500-600 brands. Ultimately we ended up with 15 in the move.”

Some wouldn’t even entertain the idea of being in the movie.

“We tried to get BP to come and sponsor us,” Spurlock said. “Because if anybody needs a brand makeover, it’s BP.”

Spurlock said he got the idea two years ago when watching an episode of Heroes in which Hayden Panettiere’s character was given a car by her father and kept repeating the model, “Nissan Rogue” over and over.

He initially went to ad agencies and product-placement firms and lacking success, decided to approach the companies themselves.

“Ban was the first sponsor to sign on,” he said. “Then everybody else came on. That’s how much power Ban deodorant has.”

The film’s tag line is: “He’s not selling out. He’s buying in.”

Spurlock was concerned that the sponsor companies would demand creative say over how they were portrayed in the movie. But he retained full artistic control.

Even with that freedom, some of his ideas didn’t pass muster.

“I wanted to give away a car to someone who would actually name their kid Mini Cooper,” says Spurlock. “I thought it was a good idea.”

The film explores the ubiquity of advertising — including advertising banners outside small schools in Florida and on education stations shown in classrooms.

“Nothing is sacred anymore,” Spurlock said. “Everywhere we go we’re being marketed to.”

Since making the movie, Spurlock said he is hyper-aware of advertising.

“Now I see ads everywhere,” he said, adding to the premiere audience: “This film is going to ruin movies and TV for you forever.”

If flying on JetBlue, prepare to see Spurlock’s goateed face welcoming passengers on the airline’s TV screens. He will also be featured in ad campaigns for Hyatt hotels and on the cartons of Amy’s Pizza.

When someone in the audience asked if his query could be deemed “the greatest question ever asked”, Spurlock quipped: “For $20, we’ll put your name in the credits.”

Spurlock also has a documentary about Comic-Con coming out this spring and said he’s working on a new documentary with Jason Bateman and Will Arnett on male grooming.

But, for a film about corporate sponsorship and advertising, Spurlock did a bit of false advertising of his own. In a hilarious scene in which he uses a shampoo called “Mane and Tail” he is shown washing his hair, his son’s hair and his Shetland Pony’s mane. Though he refers to it as a pony, he admits it is actually a miniature horse.

His goal with this movie was to make a blockbuster documentary.

“There may even be a sequel,” he said afterward. “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold 2: The Search for More Money’.”

7968: Mad Men Mention.

The latest episode of AMC series Mad Men covered cultural cluelessness, crudeness and commercialization.

A Black couple walked past Don Draper as he stood in front of the New York Athletic Club.

Joey the freelance copywriter openly disrespected Joan Harris, calling her a whore and accusing her of walking around the office like she’s trying to get raped. He later cracked to coworkers that Joan and Lane Pryce were having sex in the Brit’s office. After posting a drawing of Joan giving Lane a blowjob—with the caption, “Tally Ho!”—Peggy Olson fired the moron.

Referring to his secretary who was recovering from cataracts surgery, Draper joked, “Can you tell Ray Charles to come in here…?”

In a really blatant example of product placement, Draper drank a can of Budweiser—which seemed completely out of character for the type of alcoholic Draper appears to be.

A second product placement example involved a jug of Clorox bleach set alongside boxes of Draper’s belongings in the garage.

A third example displayed a bottle of Canadian Club among the collection of booze in Draper’s office.

This lame advertising program is becoming a lame advertisement.