Last week, Apple revealed one of its biggest marketing secrets in federal court: The company relies heavily on free product placement in television shows and movies.
And Apple has a fascinating history of product placement, which it doesn't like to talk about.
Bloomberg reports that Apple's marketing chief, Phil Schiller, said that "One of Apple's employees works closely with Hollywood on so-called product placement so its gadgets are used in movies and television shows."
That one employee needs a raise.
Even though Apple has announced again and again that it doesn't pay for spots, Apple products appeared in 891 TV shows in 2011 alone. According to Brandchannel, iDevices were in 40 percent of movie box office hits.
“Apple won’t pay to have their products featured, but they are more than willing to hand out an endless amount of computers, iPads, and iPhones,” Gavin Polone, who produced Zombieland, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and more, told Businessweek. “It’s kind of a graft situation.”
From when Apple was more open with its movie tie-ins (Mission: Impossible was very public) to seemingly random placements (the iPad starred in a Modern Family episode the day before its release with supposedly no prompting from Apple), here are Apple's most interesting product placements.
Did we miss something cool? Let us know in the comments.
Mission: Impossible
Apple's product placement wasn't always so hush-hush. When the company was struggling in 1996, Jon Holtzman, Apple's marketing manager, made a major deal in which the PowerMac had a starring role in the first Mission: Impossible film. Although Apple didn't pay for the placement, the film and tech company made an arrangement: In exchange for PowerMac's prominent role, Apple would strongly promote the movie in its ads. (See the commercial below). This worked out pretty well for both parties involved.
"We saved almost $500,000 in production costs—and got Brian De Palma to direct and Tom Cruise to act in it," Holtzman told Bloomberg.
Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol
Fifteen years later, the Mission: Impossible series still couldn't get enough of Apple products. But this time, there was no quid pro quo. Even though the film had three official brand partners (Toshiba, BMW, and Coke Zero) and it partnered with the NHL and Facebook, Apple's iPads, iPhones, etc. had eight minutes of free screen time.
Legally Blonde
Legally Blonde's protagonist, Elle Woods, didn't only stand out for being supposedly the only attractive blonde female in all of Harvard Law, but her sherbet iBook did anything but blend into a sea of black PCs.
One should note that this was in the era in which the Apple logo appeared upside down when it was opened. Joe Holtzman had fought for the change to make things easier for product placement opportunities: In the 1990s, filmmakers would resort to making special stickers so that the logo would appear upright.
Former Apple employee Joe Moreno explained that Steve Jobs had opted for this design choice so that consumers would see the apple sign right side up when it was closed.
"Why was it upside down from the user's perspective an issue? Because the design group noticed that users constantly tried to open the laptop from the wrong end. Steve Jobs always focuses on providing the best possible user experience and believed that it was more important to satisfy the user than the onlooker ... Obviously, after a few years, Steve reversed his decision."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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