‘Wall-E’ Gives Glimpse of Product Placement’s Future
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In Disney Pixar’s new movie, “Wall-E,” the female heroine is a shiny all-white robot with no seams or overt buttons showing. Remind you of anything? Actually, it brings to mind most of the Apple product line.
But unlike many movies showing actors gulping from branded soda cans and making calls on cellphones with long logo shots, Apple’s “Wall-E” appearance isn’t what most would deem product placement. And it might well be the model of the future.
‘Almost indoctrinating’
Apple products only physically appear in “Wall-E” a few times — an iPod that re-projects a favorite movie, the sound of the Mac startup tone signaling that Wall-E, the titular robotic romantic lead, has fully recharged via solar panels, and one-button mice scurrying around a garbage dump. However, there is a less obvious, but still noticeable Apple influence that runs throughout the film.
“My first thought when I watched the movie with my kids and I heard that Mac boot tone and the whole audience laughed … was that it’s so subtle, it’s almost indoctrinating,” said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. “That 600 years from now there’s nothing of value on the Earth, but there’s the Mac boot tone.” Abram Sauer, a freelance writer who pens the annual product-placement awards for brandchannel.com, said the whole film could serve as a model for the future.
“People talk about how products and brands will sponsor movies … that’s what’s going to happen. But Apple has already done that here without being directly involved. This is what we would use as a great example of how to sponsor a movie,” he said. “I would call it product homage. And that is way more valuable than product placement. It doesn’t just reinforce a single Apple product, it reinforces Apple’s entire design approach from MacBook to iPod to iPhone.”