THE OBENSON REPORT

I stumbled across an interesting site called BrandChannel which lists all ad placement found within studio feature films, going back to 2001.

Something to pay attention to next time you sit down to watch a movie, and to discuss, when you and your pals go to Starbucks afterwards and order Frappuccinos, oblivious of the fact that you might be doing so because you saw one in the movie you just watched.

For example, in the 2002 hit Barbershop, BrandChannel states the following: By far one of the most brand heavy films we’ve covered. Yet almost no brand stuck out or seemed obtrusive. The only noticeable brand to continually re-appear was Miss Sixty, a jean and clothing maker that one of the film’s stars happened to endorse, which creates a bit of post-modern seamlessness.

Brands featured in Barbershop include the following: 360 Style, All, Bear Credit, Bentley, Big Daddy, Burger King, Cadillac, Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet, Chicago Tribune, Chock Full O’Nuts, Cocoa Pebbles, Cristal, Dentyne, Durex, Ebony, Ecko Unltd, Fred Perry, FUBU, Gatorade, Gillette, Grape-Nuts, Hennessy, Herbalife, Honda, Huggies, Intl. House of Pancakes, Kodak, Krispy Kreme, Lucky Tiger, Lugz, Master Lock, Meoshe, Mercedes, Miss Sixty, MUG, Nilla, Now and Later, Oldsmobile, Oprah Winfrey, Oreo, Pelle Pelle, Pepsi, Planters, Pure Playaz, Range Rover, Red Lobster, Samuel Adams, Savoy, Sean John, SnackWells, Toyota, Triscuit, Tropicana, Us magazine, USA Today, USPS, and Viagra!

You can tell who the target audience of the film is, without even knowing what the film is about, or who is in it, just by looking at the brands featured in the film :o)

Or how about 2004's You Got Served? Featured brands include: Adidas, Aquafina, Cadillac, Casio, Converse, Ecko Unltd, Fiji, Girbaud, Jordan, K-Swiss, Mecca, Motorola, MTV, New Skool, Pepsi, Portland Trailblazers, Reebok, Schott, Shady, Sony, Tropicana.

Comparing the brands featured in the above 2 films, you'll notice some crossover - brands featured in both films (Cadillac, Ecko Unltd, Pepsi and Tropicana)... revealing of who the target audience is, companies and products that the filmmakers obviously thought would appeal to the target audience (a lot of clothing and shoe brands, which isn't very encouraging), and more. This is all useful info I think. I feel like so much analysis could be done with this data to reveal lots of interesting facts about the business and how audiences are mapped. It would be interesting to look at the box office totals of each film as well, and determine what the combination of that data with the branding data would tell us.

Check out BrandChannel. It's not a complete list of films, and it's not up to date, but there's enough there to keep you busy for now.

And now for my own featured branding...