You Look Like You Need a Guinness

prestidigital writes "This is a great fictional advertisement (high bandwidth) for Guinness. I say "fictional" because it is from the movie Minority Report. You may recall that Steven Spielberg is known for heavy branding in movies ala the opening scenes from Back to the Future (Burger King and Pepsi plastered all over). Well, apparently he has taken it a step further by weaving it into the very fabric of the plot in Minority Report. Cool ads if you can afford to wait for them. Lexus is good."

Not Spielberg...

[Richard5mith]

Except of course that Back to the Future was co-written and directed by Robert Zemeckis and it was just Spielberg's production company (Amblin).

Hey, that add worked!

[Rhinobird]

I don't want just ANY Lexus now...I want the one in the movie. How about commenting on the cross promotion prevelant. In this month's Popular science is an article about that Lexus that Mr. Anderton drives around in. How about commenting on that: advertising disguised as news?

my impression

[cr@ckwhore]

When I saw this movie, the large amount of blatant product placements was sickening.

There were others not mentioned in the article...

Nokia had a huge spot, with their logo placed on every electronic device for an entire scene.

Burger king is also a whore, with their logo being well within plain view during a mall scene.

The first ad to catch my eye, was Aquafina. I guess they're still packaging aquafina water in 2054 with the same package design and logo.

Informing?

[mikosullivan]

Where did you get the idea that advertising is usually supposed to be rational? I've never heard anyone in the industry claim that. Advertising is generally about awareness: make the consumer aware of the product so that when the time for a possible purchase comes along the product is in the consumer's mindset. That's why there are so many car commercials. Nobody expects the commercials to actually make someone want to buy a car. Only a tiny fraction of the audience is expected to even be interested. The intent of the ads is that for that small fraction of the audience that actually is thinking about getting a car, indeed for the even tinier fraction that is thinking of getting a car in that product class, the ad puts the car into the consumers' mindsets.

There are also other intents of advertising, including the occasional rational decision type... check on trade journal and you'll see a lot of ads with a lot of real informational content. Image is, of course, another popular objective (Pepsi comes to mind).

They already refrain from that

[mikosullivan]

That was one aspect of Minority Report that I found unrealistic. Companies already refrain from publicly flaunting their knowledge of you. For example, for a short while a lot of Pizza Huts answered the phone with "Hello Mr. Smith, would you like another large thin-n-crispy with mushrooms?" They quickly found out that customers didn't like that and stopped doing it.

That's not to say they don't have or use their knowledge of you, they've just found that people like to maintain their illusions of privacy.

Re:Manipulating the mindless masses

[rabidcow]

Not that I'm trying to disagree, but most of those are pretty flimsy points.

1) Employ psychologists who don't have an ounce of ethics in them

Potentially libel. It may be true, but I don't see any evidence and it's not a widely known fact.

2) Have music in their adverts

So they aren't totally boring? And why do they have music in movies?

3) Advertise over and over again when we all already know about their product

Just because *YOU* know about their product doesn't mean that everyone does. Besides, it's NEW! and IMPROVED! now.

4) Spend double-digit percentages of their company's money on advertising

Probably because advertising is expensive. Or do you think they wouldn't advertise for free if they could?

"Microsoft". Need I say more.

Yes. WTH is that supposed to mean? All companies are working for Microsoft? Ok, Microsoft is a good example of what you're saying, but what about, say Disnep? McDonalds? Pepsi? Presidencial campaigns?