Movies and television have a history of being used to promote products. Advertising has gone hand-in-hand with each form of media for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t matter what you are watching. If there is something on television that captures your attention, corporations will find some way to advertise something else to you. Networks place chyrons for their other shows at the bottom of the screen. Commercial breaks hype up the next big consumer item. And then there is the product placement. Oh, the product placement.
Product placement is a large piece of the advertising market. Thanks to streaming services becoming a much bigger share of the entertainment industry, there’s less chance of people watching standard network or cable television where commercial breaks are a thing. Corporations adapted. Their form of adaptation was a way that had already been an essential part of television and movies. They paid studios and filmmakers to feature their products in their work. Sometimes it was more obvious than others, like entire scenes or stories of Community, Chuck, and Hawaii Five-0 being devoted to Subway. Other times, it was subtler with someone just happening to be typing away on a Macbook. Either way, they were getting their product in front of viewers’ eyes.
The more interesting case, and what brings us into this week’s post, is when an entire movie is used to promote something else. The people involved in the movie, and the story they are bringing to life, are simply used to promote something else that will be coming out or is currently out for people to get a hold of. It could be seen as a branching out of a product, but it is works both ways. A product leading to a movie might be the ultimate goal. The movie will still promote that product, though, making it the ultimate product placement.
Spice World was one of those movies. The 1997 comedy followed Mel B, Mel C, Victoria, Emma, and Geri as they travelled from one place to another, performing music. Their manager, Clifford (Richard E. Grant), tried to set up a movie deal with a film producer (George Wendt) and writer (Mark McKinney). Meanwhile, newspaper head Kevin McMaxford (Barry Humphries) sets Brad (Jason Flemyng) and Damien (Richard O’Brien) out to take down the Spice Girls for better headlines.
This was the heyday of The Spice Girls. Their first album had been released in 1996, with their follow-up being released a year later, in 1997. That follow-up was directly linked to Spice World, with the final title being Spiceworld. The songs were written during filming and integrated into the movie. It became the unofficial soundtrack. Thus, it could be said that the movie was made to promote new music from The Spice Girls, or that the second album was to promote the movie. Either way, there was some cross-promotion and product placement going on.
The other way that Spice World was made for product placement was to promote The Spice Girls, themselves. The personas that the singers took on when they hit the stage got extra time to shine in the movie. Audiences got to familiarize themselves with The Spice Girls beyond listening to their music and seeing interviews. They got to go on an adventure with the decade-defining girl group. The movie promoted them by showing how Mel B fit the Scary Spice persona, how Mel C was sporty, how Emma was the baby of the group, how posh Victoria really was, and what it meant for Geri to be Ginger Spice beyond the red hair. It was an advertisement for the band to help their fans connect better with them. It worked, too. Their second album became a huge success.
Around the same time, there was another major case of a movie being made solely as product placement for something else that was popular. Like Spice World, there was some success in the product placement. It wasn’t quite the same level of success, though it lasted much longer. The product being advertised throughout the movie is still a major part of entertainment, where The Spice Girls kind of dissolved, for the most part, at the turn of the century. I’m talking about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a hit television show through the 1990s. It started in 1993, finding success in the after-school television market. Kids were eating the show up. It blended Japanese sentai series footage with original American footage. There were big fights between people in costumes. There were also some grounded stories about high school teens in California that doled out lessons to the kids watching the action unfold at home. You would get to see a monster explode into sparks, and that would be followed up with a scene about how important it was to be yourself and be a good friend.
Two seasons into Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a film came out. It was set in an alternate continuity. That became obvious when the show returned for season three and covered some of the same ground within the story. The point of the movie wasn’t to continue the story of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The point of the movie seemed to be to tell a similar kind of monster-of-the-week story, but on a bigger scale. There was a bigger budget and more impressive effects.
The movie was a modest success at the box office, but critics panned it for essentially being a longer episode of the show. It didn’t feel any different than the show aside from being longer and having the budget for some computer animated effects and gadgets for the Power Rangers. The audience was there, though. The people who watched the show were there for the movie and would return to the show. People who were introduced to Power Rangers by the movie, who liked the movie, would check out the show. It was a win-win for Saban, the production company behind the property. The show was promotion for the movie and the movie was promotion for the show.
This form of product placement doesn’t happen quite as much as you might expect. There aren’t too many times when an entire movie is made for the purpose of promoting another product or person. Spice World managed to be a movie promoting The Spice Girls as a band. It was meant to help their fans better connect with the band members so that they would want to see and hear more from them. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie was meant to showcase what the Power Rangers franchise was about, on a bigger scale. It had the upsized budget that only a film could get at the time. It brought people into the series while also giving fans of the series another way to see their favourite characters on screen. Both movies were product placement for their main characters, pulling from their past work and promoting their future work.
Product placement doesn’t usually go that far. It usually involves a simple flash of a product or a tie-in of the product into the story. Every once in a while, a story might be put on hold for a character to talk about a product in a very pitch-man type of way. The story isn’t usually tailor made for the product itself. It’s usually tailored to fit the product in. The product is placed into the story, hence the product placement moniker. In these two cases, the product was the story.
With the landscape of entertainment changing as the world becomes digitally focused, product placement has become a much more apparent thing. It was already happening throughout the 80s and 90s, but as commercials took a back seat during programming, product placement took its place to advertise the newest products. There have been some laughable instances of it. There have also been many more that you might not have immediately noticed. Some product placement is done well. Some is not. That’s like the quality of anything, really.
Now for some notes:
- I brought up Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (week 226) throughout this post.
- Bob Hoskins made a brief appearance in Spice World. He previously appeared in Son of the Mask (week 207) and Super Mario Bros. (week 248).
- George Wendt played the film producer in Spice World. He had roles in Sandy Wexler (week 231) and Santa Buddies (week 420).
- David Fahm and Craig Kelly both showed up in Wing Commander (week 394) and Spice World.
- Richard O’Brien played a crucial role in Spice World. He also popped up in Flash Gordon (week 81).
- Elvis Costello has had small parts in both Spice World and 200 Cigarettes (week 161).
- Alan Cumming was in Spice World and Son of the Mask (week 207).
- Finally, Spice World featured the great Richard E. Grant, who was also in Hudson Hawk (week 232).
- Have you seen Spice World? What did you think? Are there any other movies where the movie itself is product placement, rather than the product placement being a part of it? Maybe Batman & Robin (week 138), where everything had to be toyetic. Anyway, if you have thoughts about this post or the topics in it, drop them in the comments or find me on Twitter.
- Let me know what movies I should be checking out for Sunday “Bad” Movies by putting your suggestions in the comments or on my Twitter feed. I’ll find them and I might even include them in future posts.
- Make sure to check in with Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram.
- Now it’s time for a look forward to the next upcoming movie. It’s one that will make you jump. Not because it’s scary. It’s not a horror flick. Next week’s movie will be a little more science fiction. That’s because I’ll be checking out Jumper, the 2008 flick from Doug Liman. Do you want to hear my thoughts? Stay tuned for next week’s post. See you then.
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