Best Product Placements on Videos...

I am running out of things to blog since I haven't really bought much this year thanks to being coped up most weekends in the apartment doing homework and not being able to watch TV (maybe I should stop watching TV altogether! Think of how much $$ would I save from not watching product placements!)

So, I thought about what to blog tonight and I came up with instead of what is shown on TV, how about movies? I am going to list three top product placement in movies.

# 3 would be: It was a toss up between Runaway Bride or Castaway but I chose Runaway Bride since it featured FedEx. What I love about this part is when one of the characters said, wherever it is, she will be there tomorrow morning at 10:30AM. Brilliant!



Number #2: Défilé du 8e Battalion. I picked this one because it really shows how consumerism transcends our generation and did not start in the 80's like a lot of people think.

Product placement originates back to its film debut in the 1800's. In the film titled "Défilé du 8e Battalion" (Girel, 1896), a wheelbarrow displaying the Sunlight Soap logo and accompanied by a tuxedoed Lavanchy —Clarke, is placed in the foreground between the camera and the parade. The business of product placement had begun.



And the Number #1 goes to (drumroll please) You've Got Mail.

In its first ten minutes, "You've Got Mail" covers probably half its budget with unabashed product placements.

The fact that the movie pimps America Online was a given -- this internet-inspired remake of "The Shop Around the Corner" has no cute catch without it. But when Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks conspicuously frequent Starbucks (five or six times in the course of the movie) and make purchases with Visa cards they shamelessly flash in the camera, it's enough to make one stop watching the movie and ask aloud why Warner Bros. still wants my eight bucks.

Dreaming of Manolo Blahnik...

When Carrie Bradshaw, the shoe-loving central character of the HBO TV series Sex And The City, took a wrong turn after lunch in SoHo she found herself on one of New York’s grungier side streets and face-to-face with a mugger. “Please sir,” she pleaded. “You can take my Fendi baguette, you can take my ring and my watch, but don’t take my Manolo Blahniks.”

Unfortunately for Carrie, the mugger did just that and ran off with her favourite pair of strappy sandals. Thanks in part to Sex And The City Manolo Blahnik has become one of the handful of designers whose name is synonymous with their product. In his case it is his Christian name, because “Manolo” is now used as slang to describe very expensive, very beautiful shoes: even by the millions of people who have never actually seen a pair of Manolo Blahniks and could not dream of spending $300 or $400 to buy them.

Well, before Sex and the City, I have never heard of Manolo...but I quickly fell in love with these pair of shoes Carrie was wearing on Sex and the City above. I then found out what shoes they were and that is how I heard about Manolo Blahniks!

They are so expensive but they make you feel so gorgeous. You put on high heels and you change," says Blahnik. This philosophy perhaps explains why so many of Manolo's signature styles feature frighteningly high heels. Manolo devotees know that the higher the heel, the longer the leg and the more flattering the style.

Someday when I am rich, I may buy a pair of Manolo, but in the meantime, I will keep dreaming about them.