Bond ... James Bond

[NirvanaMan]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Um, Cricket, I don't know if you're familiar with James Bond films .... but the cars are not product placement. Particular vehicles - though certainly provided by the automaker for promotion - are integral to the JamesBondity (JamesBondage??) of these movies (and they're not there to gin up sales of those half-million dollar cars).

Umm, yeah there was. Why do you think Columbia pictures rented out an entire theatre at the spectrum for Premier Automotive Group employees and their freinds and family? The event that was btw hosted by the guy who's entire job within Ford is product placement. He does not however, pay to get cars in tv and movies, but simply offers vehicles to the studios free of charge for their use.

The FoMoCo and Sony product placement was ridiculous and over the top. I don't typically have a problem with it but it was a bit obnoxious in this tepid action flick. Everwhere you turned there was a Jag, Volvo, Lincoln, or Land Rover. And of course, the requisite Aston Martin (which I have zero problem with). Even a hand-built prototype of the new european market Ford Mondeo (which did look really good and it was mildly amusing to see Bond in a rental car for once). I guess for those (like apparently Steve) who don't know that Ford owns all those brands it was not as apparent as it was to me, but I did feel it was over the top. Product placement is great for us, sure, but not when it starts to feel like a freakin' commercial. Heh, especially when you start to see all those exact same cars show up parked outside exotic locales in supposed different parts of the world.

Oh, and you'd frankly be quite surprised at how many Aston's we sell because of the Bond connection. I know it sounds ridiculous that people would buy $150-250k cars because of a movie but, well, they do.