Product placement turn movies into music videos?

It might not be an entirely accurate title but bear with me and I'll explain what I mean. The user You-know-who made a comment on my blog article Name one great video regarding the fact that music videos were solely made for selling a product where as movies is selling a message. this made me sit down and think it over.

I can agree with him that the most important purpose of a music video is to sell a product, namely the artist. But is the movies really spared from the brutal messages of the commercial world? How big is really the difference between a music video and a box office movie commercial wise? I really only need to say product placement to answer that question. Most movies today use this to finance large parts of their operations. A quick search on Google with the key words product placement movies gives roughly 2.7 million hits and I even found a news site dedicated solemnly to product placement. For those who have no idea of how product placement works here is a quick expanantion.

In every movie you see today actors and movie characters use real life products. James Bond drives an Aston Martin and Forest Gump drink Dr Pepper. AUDI cut a spectacular sponsor deal with the movie I Robot creating a completely new car for the sci-fi movie (read an article about it here). The trick is to seamlessly place the product in plain view without it being distracting. By associating the item with a feeling or a character the status of it rises. This is the next big thing and TV-networks are already exploiting this. IMDB reported 21 July 2001 that an episode of the popular spy show Alias was sponsored by Nokia making it commercial free but instead completely financed by product placement. And Ford is heavily sponsoring the second season of the popular show 24 (Read the BBC article here).

The list of shows and movies using placement as a big part of their financing is growing every day as consumers starts to tire of the old styled commercial breaks. At least music videos are honest about their intentions.