What can you expect from one of this year’s blockbusters? Big budget, great success at the box office and lots of product placement? Well, you’ll get everything.
Iron Man 3 lived up to its expectations and opened up over its first weekend with the second best performance in history. In the USA alone it earned $174.1 million and the best opener is still The Avengers with $207.4 million. Iron Man 3 is currently having a great run at the domestic box office, but the movie continues to do extremely well overseas too, especially in China.
Let’s not forget: according to BoxOfficoMojo, Iron Man 3 had a production budget of $200 million.
Product placement
One of the most interesting aspects of Iron Man 3 is its product placement.
Tony Stark still drives his trademark car: Audi R8. This time Audi included Audi R8 e-tron, company’s first all-electric sports car prototype. Stark’s assistant Pepper Potts drives an Audi S7.
There were some other Audi cars featured in the movie as part of the product placement deal.
Florian Zitzlsperger, head of brand partnerships at Audi AG, said for Marketing Week: “The Audi R8 is the perfect car for Iron Man super hero and ingenious inventor, Tony Stark. His drive for innovation represents the constant quest for progress, which is a hallmark of the VorsprungdurchTechnik philosophy.”
Then there’s Fred Perry, one of my favorite brands with very limited exposure in movies. Stark’s ally James Rhodes, played by actor Don Cheadle, wears a classic Fred Perry Twin Tipped shirt.
One of the most interesting product placement categories in Iron Man 3 are sunglasses. We can see Tony Stark wearing London Calling by Initium Eyewear and two models M2002 and M3023 by Matsuda Eyewear. Also, Ben Kingsley wore Aviators by Randolph Engineering. Sunglasses in Iron Man 3 deserve a special blog post :)
I have to mention just one bizarre thing: China’s version of Iron Man 3 contains around three or four extra minutes of footage. It includes two Chinese actors in a couple of totally unnecessary scenes. They included those scenes just to accommodate product placement for Yili milk.
To learn more about Yili’s and other Chinese brands’ product placement read Abe Sauer’s article The Week in China: Iron Man 3: China Product Placement, Luxury Crackdown and more.
Slideshow
To get an insight what Iron Man 3 means in terms of product placement check the slideshow below. It includes probably all (or majority of) brands, visible in the movie.
I’m not a fan of Iron Man movie franchise, but Audi’s relationship with Tony Stark and all three movies is a great example of well executed product placement.
