Brand Guy Suffers Major Head Slap
Altoona.
Altoona?
Altoona for POM’s sake!
You media-savvy hipsters may be following the shameless hype surrounding Morgan Spurlock’s shameless promotion of his shamelessly transparent POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. Did I mention shameless?
The movie is a crockumentary® about product placement advertising in the film industry. Spurlock sold product placements to willing advertisers, including the million-dollar title rights to POM®.
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been posting silly updates about the movie on various social media sites. My good pal, Chicago-based gag-writer, Bill Linden, did a Facebook® post that amplified the product placement theme by naming Sanders Brand Solutions (that’s me) as a sponsor of his recent review* of the film.
Today I Facebook-posted a Wall Street Journal piece and an Altoona Mirror feature about the city getting the rights to call itself POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, for the next 60 days. I’m not surprised that a city or town would take that branding plunge, but I expected that city to be a little edgier than Altoona.
How non-edgy is Altoona? It is arguably best known for the Horseshoe Curve, a railroad track redesign that facilitated the speedier transport of materials during WWII. The Curve is also the name of the town’s minor league baseball team. Let’s face it: nothing too edgy about a curve. (Full disclosure: My lovely bride comes from the Altoona area and many of her relatives still live there.)
So when another Chicago friend, the hard-working business writer Lisa Holton, contacted me privately to ask whether I was actually involved with the branding strategy of the film, all I could say was “NOOOOOOO!” And that prompted the head slap.
What if my people (me) had contacted Spurlock’s people (him) to buy a product placement in the film?
Heck, I could have invested as much as a couple of hundred bucks to get a piece of the promotional action.
But no, I stood on the sidelines. What kind of brand guy am I?
Morgan, if POM Wonderful 2: Make Mine a Double sequel is under consideration, please count me in!
“Sanders Brand Solutions” presents Mr. Bill’s Review of POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold!!!
Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock examines the world of product placement, marketing and advertising by making a film entirely financed by product placement and advertising. What I liked most about this Michael Moore type movie is that Michael Moore is no where to be found in it! (especially naked on the movie poster!) It’s fun, PLUS it’s only 88 minutes long. I smell Oscar® for Ralph Nader!
–3 Stars! Bill (Amazon.com) Linden.
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