At the Movies: Crocs Are Stronger Than Any Hollywood Star

Usually these days when talk turns to "product placement," it means a focus on the commercial dollars-for-exposure trade that's grown to overtake the term. But "product placement" isn't always about money. Sometimes, he placement of a product is as much a character development vehicle as a piece of dialogue, especially when that product is a vehicle.

Our Idiot Brother, a heartwarming comedy about a optimistic maroon and his sisters, uses product placement perfectly. On a number of the posters (as well as in the film itself) Our Idiot Brother casts the title charter in a pair of radioactively orange Crocs. This instantly says something about the character, as well as something about the product's brand.

Orange Crocs equals dopey hippie type, because dopey hippie types wear Crocs.

The pairing has hardly gone unnoticed, taking up the exact kind of quiet character exposition the producers intended. As Gawker noted, when posting the trailer: "Here's a trailer for Our Idiot Brother, a movie about Paul Rudd having long hair and wearing crocs."

While this use of product placement to say something about a character is often a compliment (heroes are often noted as being Harvard, Oxford or Stanford grads), sometimes it's the opposite. In last year's buddy cop hit The Other Guys, a Toyota Prius was used perfectly to communicate a character's fundamental lack of aggression and manliness.

Toyota confirmed to Brandchannel that it had nothing to do with the Prius appearance, but that it was tickled nonetheless.

Even more subtle was the automobile assigned the lead character in the 2012 MacGuyver spoof MacGruber.

Will the Miata ever be respected?

That a brand can be cast in such a role and be counted upon to communicate that much about a character is a testament to the strength of the brand itself. Of course, this also means that any hope of changing such a strong brand perception is an uphill climb. Indeed, in a test of which brand is stronger, Crocs appears to win. For example, when legendary Aerosmith rocker Stephen Typer was snapped in a pair of the foam clogs, the headline was not that Crocs were now cool, but that Tyler, because of the Crocs, was not. Bringing down a rock god? That is brand power.

Also opening this weekend: Colombiana, the latest hot hit-girl film. Whatever Colombiana may have in the way of other product placement, it already has the interest of guns aficionados, like the gang at Internet Movie Firearms Database, for the bang-bang brands like Blaser (which we've noted before).

Brandcameo will be taking a break this weekend and will not have the tracking results for this weekend's top film. We will be back in two weeks with all the results though. In the meantime, check out the decade deep product placement database and the 2010 Product Placement Awards winners.