I was flipping through the TV guide channel tonight, and I saw that someone was showing that movie Fear Dot Com, which deals with like a haunted website or whatever. And that reminded me of those “haunted cell-phone” movies, like One Missed Call, and that Korean movie Phone, and then that reminded me of the fact that people used to write about that movie Phone’s phone: “That phone is so ugly, no wonder everyone is scared of it!” And then that got me thinking about whether that was a regular Korean cell-phone, or whether it was a prop they had to use because it would be negative publicity for a regular brand cell-phone to be seen to be haunting and killing people. And then it struck me: can you do negative product placement in movies?
We all know product placement: it’s where companies pay to have people in movies and TV shows use their products. But they’re usually a positive representation: like, for example, they usually don’t show someone choking to death on a Big Mac, or losing control of an Infiniti car and dying in a crash. But could a competitor do that? I mean, could a competitor pay to show their competition harming people? They do it in their ads all the time! So why not in movies?
So let’s take this “haunted cell-phone” idea and run with it. Could Microsoft, with all their stockpiles of cash, make a movie about a haunted iPhone that killed everyone who used it? And then, maybe it could infect all the iPhones out there (an idea that would be more believable with a Microsoft product, but whatever: nobody ever made money by advertising the truth!), and then everyone who used an iPhone would die a horrible death! Might that scare people away from using iPhones? (If that monthly bill won’t scare people away, then nothing will! {“I know it kills everyone, but it's so fashionable, and it has all these great apps!”}) And then, Apple could make a TV movie for their Apple TV that showed a cell-phone with the Andriod system becoming self-aware, and murdering everyone who used Android-powered phones by exploding their cell-phone batteries onto them, shocking them to death, directing them into oncoming traffic, etc. And they could keep making more and more horrific movies that would show what would happen if you used the competition’s cell-phone service! And then everyone would get a Jitterbug phone! (Until that movie: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up, because my Jitterbug phone pinned me to the floor! Help! It's trying to kill me!!!”)
Then, once the precedent had been established, Burger King could show people eating McDonald’s fries and getting obese immediately upon ingesting them, like a fat version of The Incredible Hulk; and McDonald’s could show people holding a flame-broiled Whopper, which instantly catches them on fire, and they burn to death in agony, etc. It would be great! Hey, negative political ads work, so why not negative product placement? Then they could have The Texas Chain Saw Massacre be committed by a specific brand of chain saw, and sponsored by its competitor! (<“Our chain saws would never do something like the horrific crimes perpetrated by our competition!”)
Oh, it would be great! Maybe that can be a sideline for “Ad Hominem: The Political Ad Agency”!
