POMs ROI
The movie has grossed around $250,000, which equates to around 30,000 ticket buyers.
POM Wonderful paid 1 million dollars for the title, which means they paid around $33 for each viewer.
How's that for return on investment?
They also had a whole town named after them. Altoona, PA changed their name to Pom Wonderful Presents: The Great Movie Ever Sold. So that's a whole town of residents who probably heard one way or another about the temporary and funny change, not to mention all the surrounding towns heard about it.
The movie has also not had its worldwide release yet. According to the part of the contract Spurlock showed us, Pom doesn't have to pay if the movie doesn't bring in $10 million in the box office. So if he doesn't manage it, they got FREE advertising.
It's hard to say. I just watched this on Netflix (about to be removed from .ca!) and there was zero mention of the temporary renaming of the PA town. But also they did not mention the details of the Pom Wonderful contract (which basically said they did NOT have to pay the million if the film did not hit a certain [overly ambituous?] sales target... and it didn't.)
Overall quite fascinating and eye-opening the first half or so, and the middle to the end had me feeling rather conflicted. I mean, could Brett Ratner actually be right? aka we all "sell out" in some way to some thing[s] in some form... so how is "media production reducing budget costs via product placement" so much more immoral than any other form?
I can say that this is a good accessible documentary on a subject that really impacts us all on a daily basis, and I am glad I watched it (now I want to view more Spurlock documentaries tbh)
... but the BIGGEST takeaway I got was a "WOAH" moment when they first landed in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was so WEIRD to not see buildings (and ESPECIALLY taxis and buses) have ZERO ads.
In a city of 11 million people!
So, no excuses, North American cities... Oh yeah except the right to free speech etc. I guess. But I like how the Brazilian interviewees equated "visual pollution" with air and sound pollution. Food for thought!
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Chipping away at a mountain of pop culture trivia,
Darren Dirt.