MovieChat Forums > Point Blank (1967) Discussion > First Product Placement?

First Product Placement?

posted 17 years ago by TheMemphian
8 replies | jump to latest

The Ponds Cold Creme Commercial is the first time I can think of where a real product placement is used, and used well, in a feature film. Any retorts?
I wonder if Ponds paid to be in the movie?

[–] BillK 17 years ago

Actually, by this time, vehicles had been commonly placed in movies and credited to the manufacturer. It was downright comical in some movies how all the lead characters drove Ford or Chrysler cars.

[–] TheMemphian 17 years ago

True, but they were just subliminal props, whereas this was an outright and gratuitous advertisment for a product within the movie. I can't think of any other like it.

[–] miriamwebster 12 years ago

Keep thinking; there had been plenty of far more blatant product plugs in movies made years earlier. One of most famous in roughly same time frame was huge plug for Hertz Rental Cars in 1964 Jack Lemmon comedy Good Neighbor Sam: A running comedy gag throughout movie revolved around filming of one of company's then-famous "Let Hertz put you in the driver's seat" commercials. . .with jingle sung repeatedly. A few years before that, entire plot of Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three centered on a Coca-Cola bottling plant in West Germany. Thanks to her links to Pepsi, Joan Crawford managed to get the soda pop placed in practically every movie she made from 1957 on. And before that. . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqwMz8Hyeao

[–] MystMoonstruck 11 years ago

I swear that the girl in the commercial looks and very much sounds like Barbara Feldon! I know she was doing commercials, so it's highly possible.

I just saw it, but it was so fast that I couldn't be certain. The voice made me take a closer look. It's on TCM, and I don't have a copy; so, there's no way I can be certain.

It's just something I noticed and was curious about.

Now, I'll probably go to Trivia and find it listed.

*** The trouble with reality is there is no background music. ***

[–] rabbitsandhares 11 years ago

Such a great film and I finally saw it on TCM all the way through.
I was wondering about the PONDS ad as well.
I assume it was an artistic choice over specific product placement.
Just a hunch.

[–] gds555 10 years ago

Pond's Cold Cream was such an over-advertised product on TV in the mid sixties that I can't help wondering whether the inclusion of the ad was a piece of satire rather than a product placement. If you're familiar with that time period, it's fairly comical to see the grim, macho character Walker, in the midst of a constant swirl of dire life-and-death events, suddenly be confronted with something as banal and banausic as a Pond's commercial.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] gorgsharpy 8 years ago

Cream every night it says. Freud would have no problems analysing the orgastic symbolics. Walker empties guns into beds and follows his empty revenge pattern sublimatingly that brings no real satisfaction no heart just raw power like it was a porn movie. And yet he is hurt from so long ago. It is so well made by JB.

"You couldn't be much further from the truth" - several