Is marketing taking over the movie industry?

Even though we can all laugh at the way films are commercialised today, seems that the tendency of placing strategically logos and brand names in movies is one of the most popular ways of publicity today.

Think again about James Bond, a character I love to mention in this blog, and how every time he's in deadly peril he has the time to check what time it is on his Omega watch while reaching for the keys of his Aston Martin, named the coolest car in Britain this year, and beating for the 2nd year in a row Iphone in terms of popularity brand.

This sort of blatant commercialism isn't new in the movie industry but what is surprising, is the new approaches and to what length brand managing and marketing strategies are taken to, in order to publicise a certain product.

Eurostar, whose old home at Waterloo (London site) was featured in the final ''The Bourne Ultmatum'' sequel last year, announced its move to St. Pancras (London site) by paying for ''Somers Town'', Shane Meadows's new film.

The advantage of financing a movie is having control over how and where place and publicise own brands and products, therefore Eurostar certainly new that it is cheaper and worthwhile to make a low budget film than to pay for product placement in a blockbuster.

Once the film was completed, the cross-channel train company used an agency to approach distributors and make a plan on how to present the film to the public, and Eurostar made it clear that their main objective was to create brand awareness rather than box office returns.
However the movie got good publicity in advance when the Meadows movie was accepted at the Berlin Film Festival receiving favorable reviews.

Nevertheless the numerous plugs for Eurostar are easily spotted in the movie, and to some extent tedious, such as stressing how long it takes from London to Paris with the Eurostar and placing posters for the company in the background of many key scenes.

The key question is: today, does the movie evolve around the idea of promoting a brand or does a brand look for a way of fitting into a movie lot in order to increase brand awareness?I will try to go deeper analising the way the marketing business is influencing the film industry today in the next post, meanwhile I'll leave you with the ''Somers Town'' official trailer.