Film Titles and Product Placement
Each year the brancameo Product Placement Awards presents a film with the Coca-Cola Kid Award.
Of course, each year sees few films released with brand names as part of its title. So the award generally defaults to whichever film most prominently made use of a brand name. For 2008, it’s hard to think it won’t be Gran Torino.
The first kind of films that feature brand names in the title are the obvious ones that take that very brand as their subject matter. Such films include United 93, Grounding: The Last days of Swissair, and The Pride of the Yankees. Obviously, with these films, the brand name in the title offers no deeper meaning than that the film is about that brand. (It should be noted that documentaries fall into this category as well, i.e., Outfoxed; 24 Hours on Craigslist)
Then there are the films that use name brands in their titles as a way of establishing tone, i.e., Devil Wears Prada; Cosmic Legos; Prozac Nation; Southern Comfort (1981 and 2001); The Marlboro Marine (in production). Others use name brands as a means to establish the character of the protagonists, such as Harley Davidson & the Marlboro Man, Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Arizona Colt. In such cases, the name brands featured in the title and/or as part of the character name generally do show up in the film, though usually only as an accessory of the main character. It should not be discounted though how important these name brands are as a shorthand for establishing characteristics in film protagonists (or antagonists). When a film character is identified as “Harley Davidson” and another as “the Marlboro Man,” the audience immediately knows something about these films’ characters, and it’s likely not that they’re accountants.
more after the break…
Other films feature a brand name in the film title as a direct part of the film. These brand-named film titles usually directly correlate to the premise of the film, largely featuring the respective brand name in some role. Usually, the theme of the film has nothing to do with 
the brand. Instead, the brand, or product, exists as a hub or foundation from, or around which, the film then develops. For instance, the award’s namesake, Coca-Cola Kid, isn’t about the drink at all but instead a romance story. But the action takes place within the plot architecture of a man’s attempt to establish a Coca-Cola franchise in Australia. Harold and Kumar go to White Castle is an absurdist, road-trip romp; but it takes as its central premise an attempt to get to White Castle (a la the Griswalds attempts to reach the fictional Wally World.) Because of Winn-Dixie takes place in a Winn-Dixie store. 1965’s Boeing Boeing centers around con men on flights. The 2002 Palestinian film Ford Transit is about a man who drives a Ford Transit taxi, except that it’s really about the difficulty of life in Jerusalem and Ramallah. And the Filipino film Seroks (Xerox) is about a office copy-machine worker, except that it’s really a noir about a recurring pattern of events. There are also a number of indie films with such titles that fit this category, such as 75 El Camino.
For whatever reason, Clint Eastwood has starred in three prominent “name-brand” films. Pink Cadillac. Magnum Force. Gran Torino.
Finally, and most interesting in that it runs contrary to what one might expect, such films seem to be insulated against accusations of blatant product placement. It’s obvious why the first subset of “based on true events” brand-name films would not be criticized. Not immediately as clear is why the second or especially the third kinds of these types of films, especially the ones that use these brand names despite not being about these brands, would also seemingly get a free pass.
There is one additional type of film of this branded-title genre and that is those that borrow heavily from brand named for no apparent reason whatsoever, such as Kentucky Fried Movie, Seven Up!, and Jell-Ohh Lady (which actually does feature Jell-O as a plot point.)
