When I was watching the movie The Book Of Eli and searching for information about product placement from the movie I couldn't help noticing sunglasses. They were everywhere. All lead actors wore them and I've also spotted them on the movie poster. Since they were used as an important part of Denzel Washington's wardrobe, the exposure on movie poster was quite normal and kind of expected.
Nowadays the classic product placement is an integral part of Hollywood movie production. However, putting brands on posters is not so common. The majority of posters (at least for blockbusters) include photos of lead stars, so in that case the opportunities for brand exposure are very limited. The most obvious choices are clothes or sunglasses.
As you can see on the picture above, all three posters include sunglasses. Of course you can’t recognise the brand or see the logo, but producers and marketing departments have definitely tried to promote sunglasses brands at every other possible opportunity. We now know that Denzel Washington wore Oakley’s model Inmate, Will Smith wore Dior Mist sunglasses and Marmaduke has Ray Bans on its face.
Probably the most known example of sunglasses on posters is the case of Matrix trilogy. The now-famous sunglasses worn by the Matrix characters are from the label Blinde, which prides itself on producing handmade glasses. The company's founder, Richard Walker, had to tender against large companies such as Ray-Ban and Arnette to win the film's sunglasses contract, and set himself apart by scratch-designing pairs of glasses based purely on the characters' unusual names (Source: IMDB).
Sunglasses from the Matrix were an important part of costume design and at the same time so cool that they deserve a place on the poster. Unfortunately there are a lot of examples of brands that shouldn’t be on there. Below you can see two posters that include Spalding balls. So uncool :(
Antoher products that get sometimes on posters are cars. Honestly, the car doesn’t have to be the main focus of the movie poster (Knight Rider is obviously an exception to the rule). Well, here are some examples that include cars or several brands/sponsors.
Personally, I’d rather see a poster without brands. Sometimes putting a brand on a poster is not such a bad idea (e.g. Matrix, Bullitt …), but usually it looks just lame.
So, if you’ll see a movie poster with a brand on it, just let me know. Let’s make a list of Top movie posters with brands on them.