Advertising in films: the "Product Placement"

The feeling of hatred aroused by the five painful minuts of ad break interrupting our movie is a true cause of concern for advertisers for they fear that we flick through another channel to avoid their dull ads.
Therefore, several techniques are used to keep the audience's attention but all these are nowhere near to product placement in terms of efficiency.

As you may have understood it by now, product placement consists of placing branded goods or services  in a context usually devoid of ads, specially in movies.

In April 2006, Broadcasting & Cable reported, "Two thirds of advertisers employ branded branded entertainment" ( synonym of product placement ).
The 1995 film GoldenEye was the focus of a highly successful BMW campaign, which promoted the automaker's new Z3 model. Sales of the Z3 surged as film claimed the top spot at the box office.

Pierce Brosnan and his BMW Z3 in GoldenEye

This marketing technique is very benefical and gives birth to struggles between rival companies to acquire the monopoly of placement.
For example, the character Carrie from Sex and the City, that has always been using an Apple Notebook to write her diary will turn to an Hewlett-Packard laptop ran by Windows 7 in the next seasons (according to this website) as Windows is investing millions of dollars in its marketing campaign to promote their products as trendy.

Carrie and her Apple laptop

I think this is a good illustration to why are popular programmes the target of ad campaigns: a product that belongs to a character's routine with whom the audience identifies, automatically creates an affective link between the product and the character, and therefore with the spectator.

Nevertheless, not any product can be marketed in a film, for instance in the U.K. product placement adverts have to adhere to the existing UK advertising rules meaning that no cigarettes, alcohol, gambling or medicinal products will be shown, neither will any foods that have high percentage of fat, salt or sugar ( quoting that page ).
The next link is, in my opinion, the most emphasized product placement ever in a movie, I think you will like it :
Will Smith in iRobot, promoting Converse

Alexandre