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You Look Like You Need a Guinness
prestidigital writes "This is a great fictional advertisement (high bandwidth) for Guinness. I say "fictional" because it is from the movie Minority Report. You may recall that Steven Spielberg is known for heavy branding in movies ala the opening scenes from Back to the Future (Burger King and Pepsi plastered all over). Well, apparently he has taken it a step further by weaving it into the very fabric of the plot in Minority Report. Cool ads if you can afford to wait for them. Lexus is good."
If advertising is really about 'informing' the public to make 'rational' decisions, then why do advertises need to:
1) Employ psychologists who don't have an ounce of ethics in them
2) Have music in their adverts
3) Advertise over and over again when we all already know about their product
4) Spend double-digit percentages of their company's money on advertising
5) Have little in the way of actual information in their adverts, and instead just try and sell an image
The reality is, people are ignorant and highly controllable. Society is a socio-economic machine; there is no rationality nor any real understanding of how it works. Each individual mindlessly functions in relation to the little corner which they face on a day to day basis, and will decieve themselves into accepting and doing whatever they're tricked or pushed into thinking will make them personally more secure.
"Microsoft". Need I say more.
(Fucking close to water)
HTTP/1.1 400
You can already see that this kind of advertising is soon to come. Ya get hundreds of email spam with your name on it and you get tons of phone calls a day congradulating YOU for being accepted for a new low rate card. How many of you agree that if not the eyes being scanned, there is at least this huge war for the eye balls at every website you go to. Remember those obnoxious flash adds, flashing adds, adds that run all over the page you are trying to read, and not to mention the ones with audio. I think there is a line that consumers are going to put up with. We have been pounded and proded by product placement in every single medium we use, and there is a point where you start to loose customers who get pissed off with this invasion of sanity. Hopefully people will speak up before the ads in this movie become a reality otherwise I am going to start wearing mirror sunglasses.
I've had 3 Guinesses this morning in the same time it took that clip to load. And that that includes settle time. ;->
Except of course that Back to the Future was co-written and directed by Robert Zemeckis and it was just Spielberg's production company (Amblin).
I don't want just ANY Lexus now...I want the one in the movie. How about commenting on the cross promotion prevelant. In this month's Popular science is an article about that Lexus that Mr. Anderton drives around in. How about commenting on that: advertising disguised as news?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Going into the store with you significant other...
"Ah! Joe Johansen! Good to see you again! We just received a new batch of KY in butterscotch, your favorite flavor, according the Basking Robbins!
We know you normally buy KY down at Big Al's Porn Shoppe on 32nd, but this store is 4 blocks closer to your home, and we know how awkward it is to get those 50 gallon drums home on the public slideway! Why not have one of our friendly clerks help you out to your car with one of the store's hand-trucks? Remember, we provide free curb service, where Big Al's doesn't!
How is Millie, your Yak, by the way? Has the infection she had responded to the Penicillin you purchased two weeks ago from Bob's Veterinary Supply? Is she still down in U-Store-It Storage Unit #15? We have a co-marketing agreement with U-Store-It, where if you buy from us today, you will get 5% off your next month's rent!
..."
[and on and on...]
Uh, no thank you!
If PKD were still alive he would be laughing his ass off at the product placements in this movie; not only are the ads portrayed as he envisioned, the moviemakers actually used the techniques being portrayed to help pay for the movie portraying them.
On second viewing I also have to say that the "not too futuristic future" is more different from ours than it first appears. Every flat surface in the movie's public space is a monitor showing ads. Even the cereal box! (That was soooo Philip K. Dick.) While The Gap might not be around in 2050, you can rest assured some other business serving the same niche will be; and it and the fashions within will be as unremarkable to the people of 2050 as the Gap and its product are to us in 2002.
And you have to really wonder whether the rest of the movie after Anderton is haloed is just a fantasy (a la Total Recall) or if it really happened...
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
There is a reputed Blade Runner Curse, referring to a number of brands given prominent display in Blade Runner which fell victim to hard financial times during the 80's, with the exception of Coca-Cola. Brands such as Atari and Pan Am, which were featured quite prominently in ads on the sides of buildings lost a tremendous amount business, to the point of collapse (although I was shocked last week to see the Atari brand on my NWN box). It wouldn't surprise me, then, to see a number of companies shown in Minority Report to collapse before 2054, even currently viable corporate behemoths. I would like to think that their inclusion in a speculative illustration of dystopian coporate intrusion would be the "real reason" they collapsed, and that PKD somehow had a part in it, laughing at the irony of it all.
Free Mac Mini
When I saw this movie, the large amount of blatant product placements was sickening.
There were others not mentioned in the article...
Nokia had a huge spot, with their logo placed on every electronic device for an entire scene.
Burger king is also a whore, with their logo being well within plain view during a mall scene.
The first ad to catch my eye, was Aquafina. I guess they're still packaging aquafina water in 2054 with the same package design and logo.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
If you look at:
the DEMOLITION MAN (1993) quote:
--------
Lenina Huxley: [T]aco Bell was the only restaurant to survive the Franchise Wars.
John Spartan: So?
Lenina Huxley: So, now all restaurants are Taco Bell.
--------
and "E.T. the Extra Terrestrial" (1982) key scene where the film's main human character, 9-year-old Elliott, lured E.T. of the woods with Reese's Pieces
you'll see it's been around for a while.
Walking into a bookstore:
But, it might be neat to have tailored banner ads online. I mean, I never want to go hunting or fishing, so don't show me anything outdoorsy, but would like to see something regarding computer programming, but not games.
Click here or here.
Even worse, the export version of the film had a different restaurant chain, because Taco Bell is US only.
"We need personalized ads, like Minority Report. And we need them now. I want ads like that in our malls by next year!"
You may be at +5 funny, but knowing some scummy marketers in my lifetime, I'd moderate this as +5 "frighteningly close to reality".
the AC
Butterscotch is not my favourite flavour
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I found it strange that Washington D.C. of all places ... one well known for its large black population and its folks from other races would have 99% white people in it. Take a look for yourself, around the pool, in the mall, in the cars, in the jail, everywhere public ... white people.
Go ahead and make up scenarios for yourself to explain this phenomenon.
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