Chronicle — the new #1 movie in North America, taking in over $22 million over Super Bowl weekend — is a thriller in the tradition of The Blair Witch Project, in which the film is presented as a collection of real footage found after the event. But Chronicle's innovation goes well beyond the "found footage" gambit.

Where the film was truly innovative was in a promotion that won the film boatloads of attention and earned media. The week before its release, 20th Century Fox flew "people" above New York City in a stunt that generated viral buzz.Continue reading...

This weekend's Super Bowl provides the opportunity for many trying to get out the message. It's a marquee event for auto, fashion, soda, real estate, and breakfast brands. It's a chance to see the new VW-Star Wars love-in.

This year, as the East Coast teams remind us all how deplorable the New York-Boston rivalry is, the West Coast's Hollywood players will be hitting audiences with trailers for the year's upcoming tent-pole titles. A little look at the trailers in store for Super Bowl Sunday beginning with Marvel's teaser of its Super Bowl trailer for The Avengers at top. (Nobody tell Marvel that it already released a full 2-minute Avengers trailer.) Continue reading...

In a trailer playing before this week's top film, The Grey, Sony finally merged its studio product with that of its consumer products division. It's the kind of thing that would make Jack Donaghy pee his bespoke pants with excitement.

The trailer begins as a "This is my life" commercial for Sony's range of handheld tech products, including phones and tablets. But then it seamlessly morphs into a trailer for the fifth installment in the Resident Evil franchise, due out in September. It's the boldest move yet by a brand that has been loading its on-screen business with its on-the-shelf one.Continue reading...

It could be said that this week's top film, The Grey, serves best as a tourism commercial for Alaska. The film perfectly appeals to that hard-to-target demographic of tourists looking to travel to a barren, majestic, unsullied landscapes… and die in them.

The Grey is also caused a bit of debate about wolves. Are they really the man-killing beasts the film makes them out to be?Continue reading...

Academy Award nominations were announced this week and everyone is angry, as usual.

When it comes to product placement, the list of nominees includes a few notable films, including George Clooney's latest star turn.Continue reading...

Brandchannel has published the annual Brandcameo Product Placement Awards since 2004. This year, on February 13, we will announce the Product Placement Award winners for 2011.

But we need your help.

Most of our awards are determined by the work we do tracking product placement in movies throughout the year. One of the most important categories is the readers' choice section, which is where you come in.

We would truly appreciate it if you would answer four short questions about the last year in movie product placement. Thank you in advance and to jog your memory, take the quiz based on the above image at the end the survey (and stay tuned for the awards on Feb. 13).Continue reading...

An Ad Age story this week on product placement in the hit ABC sitcom Modern Family finds that "producers turn down about 90% of requests" even though "advertisers are working furiously to get their goods into the hands of the characters."

On its way to anointing the show as the trophy of product placement deals, Ad Age puts forth an outlandish claim about how product placement works.Continue reading...

In the new age of product placement, it's difficult to believe a movie like Underworld: Awakening could only have one easily identifiable brand. (And a gun brand at that.)

Not that the franchise was ever a product placement extravaganza. The first two films in 2003 and 2006 had but 13 identifiable products between them: a handful of them, also gun brands.

In the Underworld franchise's fourth outing, this new #1 movie adds to a robust collection of film "brands": A fake bioengineering corporation.Continue reading...