Goldeneye- - - - An annoying thing about Goldeneye was that there was the tremendous media brouhaha about how James Bond was going to drive a BMW-- and then the damn BMW Z3 hardly features in the film. Q gives a spiel about it but it hardly figures in the plot. I'm not opposed to product placement in James Bond movies, because in a sense James Bond is all about brand names-- Aston Martin, Bacardi, Walther PPK. I understand Fleming made a point of littering his stories with brand names to add verisimilitude. However, I would suggest to the sponsors, if your product is going to be made the center of attention as a "gadget", try to make sure it actually does something cool in the course of the movie. Conversely if your product is only going to make an incidental background appearance, then don't pay so much for the slot and don't blow the whole thing out of proportion. Also, I think less is more when it comes to advertising your product's movie appearance. You want people to think that James Bond selected your brand of underwear naturally, for a man who prefers to live life to the full, knowing that each day might be his last and that Her Majesty's Government is picking up the tab, would never settle for any but the finest and most high-quality underwear. Don't make everyone suffer through incessant TV ads about how "we are the sponsors of the upcoming James Bond movie, please please notice our underwear in scene six and also in scene twenty-three, because we sure paid a heck of a lot of money for it." |