Brands & Films

Reflections on product placement in movies, music and on TV

Month: March, 2010

Hotels, bars and product placement

“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were talking so brave and so sweet
giving me head on the unmade bed
while the limousines wait in the street.”
In 1974 Leonard Cohen released his fourth album New Skin for the Old Ceremony, which included the song Chelsea Hotel #2. The song is about his secret affair with [...]

Veronika Decides to Die

In 1998 Paulo Coelho wrote his 15th novel Veronika Decides to Die. It tells a story of a young, beautiful woman (Veronika) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, who appears to have the perfect life, but nevertheless decides to commit suicide by taking too many sleeping pills.
Just before Veronika passes out she sees an article in a foreign [...]

Wishlist

On May 5, 1998 Pearl Jam, one of the greatest bands of the last 20 years, released a song “Wishlist”. This beautiful song is about Eddie Vedder seeking fulfillment of his wishes.
There’s a line “I wish I was the full moon shining off your Camaro’s hood” that references the car (Chevrolet Camaro) that belonged to [...]

P.F. Chang’s

In one of my recent posts (The Apple genius) I commented on the P.F. Chang’s product placement in the TV series The Big Bang Theory.
For all those readers who are not familiar with series here’s short plot summary: the show is set in Pasadena, California and is about two prodigies in their 20s, one an [...]

The Virgin telephone

Last Friday a new Lady Gaga music video premiered on E! News. The video for the song Telephone attracted 833,000 viewers, a 32% increase from the network’s average performance in the time slot. It also generated close to 4 million views on YouTube in less than 24 hours.
Expensive music videos were in the past reserved [...]