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Lucky Star Trailer is EVIL CORPORATE ADVERTISING

 
 
Tom Coates
09:56 / 08.07.02
It purports to be a film trailer. But it's not on IMDB. It has a funky website, but it looks like a car advert. It's directed by Michael Mann, corporate-hunting director of The Insider, and yet it's actually a fucking advert for Mercedes Benz [more]

So surely this is 1) false advertising, 2) a bit immoral and 3) a complete sell-out for Michael Mann?
 
 
Bear
10:30 / 08.07.02
I knew there was something funny about that add, it just doesn't look quite right does it?
 
 
invisible_al
12:03 / 08.07.02
Oh for fucks sake, I thought it looked like a really cool film as well. Website pretty cool as well, doesn't mention mercedes Benz either. Yes very clever, so clever I didn't notice the car at all. But you're right it caught my attention because something was different about it, but I still can't pin down what it was. Apart from the blatent product placement that is. I say we force him to make the bloody movie now, how dare he tease us like this
 
 
blackbeltjones
12:49 / 08.07.02
so obviously pitched and made by Nathan Barley. It's fucking annoying - we can't even have authenticity in our pointless summer blockbusters...

A) Michael Mann directing an urban superhero movie would rock
B) Benicio is one of the best looking/coolest humans alive - a postmillennial McQueen
c) I use to love Longshot (http://www.linkt.com.au/~scott/bios/longshot.html)
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
13:12 / 08.07.02
Watching it, knowing what it really was in advance, was a bit strange for me. I was watching each bit thinking about how much time, money, and effort was being placed into every brief 3 second scene. How the actors had to only say one line and say it so that it seemed like it was taken out of context, etc, etc. I guess it wasn't unlike a music video in some ways. Still, that advert had to have had the budget of a regular film just to shoot a 2 minute trailer, which is really a secret advert. It seems to me like a massive waste of money.
 
 
Chubby P
13:39 / 08.07.02
I thought it was a car advert right up to the very last screen when it displayed what looked like film info. Then I assumed it was for a movie and thought no more of it until I read this here. I often wonder about advertising. Is this advert a success because its got us talking about it or is it a failure because no-one knows what they are advertising?
 
 
DaveBCooper
15:11 / 08.07.02
I would have thought that the company assumes an ad’s a success if people go out and buy the product… people talking about it is probably flattering for the ad agency, but the company’s shareholders are unlikely to want to take a dividend in the form of knowing that pub conversations have taken place about the product’s latest ad…

DBC
 
 
Cat Chant
18:01 / 08.07.02
So advertising is now officially coextensive with all media? Hmmm.
 
 
gentleman loser
18:40 / 08.07.02
So advertising is now officially coextensive with all media?

Yes. Yes it is.

Two thoughts: Branding works, as this thread proves (after all we're all talking about it aren't we?) and everyone in Hollywood is a whore (if you didn't already knew that, shame on you!).

Mercedes-Benz isn't about the car. It's about the lifestyle.

If people are bombarded enough with the right ads, they'll want it.

That's branding's core principle.

I was watching an old VHS tape that I recorded about 1995 or so the other day. I couldn't believe that the commercials actually gave information about the products they were trying to sell!

Those days are dead and gone.
 
 
videodrome
22:16 / 08.07.02
Are none of you familiar with The Hire? Given the outrage with which this has been received and the regular deification of David Fincher I have to assume the answer is no.

Is this a sell-out for Mann? Not really. Immoral? Ludicrous. The Insider was hunting a specific target, though he did broaden it a bit through the inclusion of the sequences about the legal hand-tying of CBS. But he's hardly a hater of corporations and is without a doubt a lover of cars, as more than a cursory glance as his resume will reveal. I really don't understand why people get so upset about this. It would be a very good idea to get used to the fact that nearly every major director does commercials, as does the entirety of the film industry. It's how they pay the rent.

As for Lucky Star I'd call it very smart. Why are people so upset? Is it that the car looks pretty cool in the images and that it would be cool to drive it like Benecio until: Oh Shit! You want me to buy the car? Not a ticket to a film? BASTARDS!

Whatever.
 
 
higuita
09:56 / 10.07.02
Having seen it once, I thought it was a car ad. Then it wasn't. Then the Guardian told me it was, so it must be true.

Thing is, people are getting all upset because the argument goes - this is a use of a different type of media to sell, and is not acknowledged as an ad. It thereby bypasses the agreement that ads should look like ads. It's breaking down people's resistance to the selling aspects.

Fuck that, it costs £92,000. That's 92,000 reasons why I'm not getting one.

Now if Benecio would do ads for a second hand dealer, they might get me...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
09:08 / 11.07.02
This is evil. Evil. Evil. How dare they assume the public is so foolish as to be tricked by this kind of shit?

Oh yeah, like I, I with my degree from Oxbridge Academy, London, am going to be suckered into buying a Mercedes Benz by lots of shots of it looking cool in a filmic context.

Now, be silent. I intend to enjoy my glass of Maker's Mark, as drunk by Willem Dafoe in Spiderman.

I really don't see what's so wrong, or rather what is wronger about this than turning actually movies into Pepsi ads.
 
 
Tom Coates
09:41 / 11.07.02
Product placement is one thing - and I think the annoying thing about product placement is that most naive viewers don't even know it's going on. If they did, then they'd probably be a little more cynical about it. But at least with product placement in films the product that they're making is one that people want to view. It's entirely possible that several films couldn't have been made without sponsorship of this kind - just like it's possible that lots of theatre wouldn't happen without adverts in the programme. Although the profits can be obscene for some films, I'm sure that product placement has stopped some poorly received films losing too much money. hence more movies. Which frankly I think is a good thing. And after all if you're going to depict someone in a film drinking a soda, eating a chocolate bar or shaving anyway - then why go to the trouble of inserting a made-up brand that people will look at and wonder 'how come they made that up? is that relevant to the plot?" or something like that...

Product placement for me only becomes horrible and disgusting when it deforms plot - as in the famous 'Rachel and Phoebe get obsessed by Pottery Barn" episode of Friends - which was literally one large advert for the company. When the product placement helps make a decent programme be profitable then I have no problem with it. When the programme IS product placement then they should fucking pay me to watch it!

This one is very different I think - this is an advert plain and simple - that masquerades as something completely different - it cynically plays on the assumption that people can get excited by trailers for an entertainment experience while being very cynical about being sold products through television. It takes an area of advertising which hasn't changed much since the 70s in format or style - and which retains a certain kind of old fashioned integrity and shits on it. I'm completely furious about it and consider Mercedes to have played on one of my most innocent passions - good movies - in a completely cynical and offensive way.
 
 
The Natural Way
11:59 / 11.07.02
has anyone seen 'Castaway'? Fucking hell....the idea that that 2 hr Fedex ad has anything important or moving to say about the human condition.... Jesus!
 
 
CameronStewart
13:17 / 11.07.02
One somewhat-subtle form of product placement I've noticed more and more lately is in the trivia questions on game shows - I was watching The Weakest Link not too long ago (I'm not proud of it, but there you go) and there were at least 5 questions that were along the lines of "blah blah blah is the slogan of what famous toilet bowl cleanser?"

Very soon the question will be: "Which is the best-tasting cola?"

"Coca-Cola!"

"I'm sorry, that is incorrect. The correct answer is Pepsi..."
 
 
Tom Coates
13:57 / 11.07.02
But Cameron. Everyone knows the best tasting cola is Coca-Cola. That would be silly...
 
  
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