The Greatest Movie Marketers Should Watch About Themselves

I am really looking forward to seeing Morgan Spurlock's--the Director of Super Size Me--new documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, opening on April 22nd. It is a movie about product placement funded by product placement... genius idea right? I'm curious to see what angle Spurlock will take, whether he associates Brands with greed or with entrepreneurial passion. As a person who works in media planning for Corporate America, I often see media plan over media plan that focuses on mass reach, impression volume and GRPs (TV metric called Gross Rating Points), forgetting that Americans today live in an overly saturated advertising landscape and have been trained to tune certain ads out. It is not to say that Brand Awareness isn't important, but to stand out, Brands have to think differently--and this is where Spurlock's awesome TED talk comes in.

For anyone in the advertising and marketing industry, I highly recommend watching Spurlock's 20-minute TED Talk about the importance of Brand Transparency and Taking Risks. My favorite quote of the talk is "if you take chances, if you take risks, that in those risks will come opportunity..."

However, if you really just want to see a movie about product placement, then re-watch Talladega Nights with Will Ferrell ("Hi, I'm Ricky Bobby. If you don't chew Big Red, then f-*bleep* you."), especially the family dinner scene where eight brands: Domino's Pizza, Taco Bell, Country Crock, Wonder Bread, Powerade, Budweiser, Coca-Cola and KFC are consecutively shot in the first 7 seconds of the clip below: