Coming soon...The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Morgan Spurlock, famous for his film documenting his 30 day experiment eating nothing but Maccy D’s, has just debuted his latest shock doc - ‘The Greatest Movie Ever Sold’ at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

This time, Morgan has decided to expose the extent of product placement in television and movies (something which is being allowed to the UK again from next month).

In a neat twist, Spurlock’s new exposé was funded entirely by name checking brands and products in return for a fee. He reportedly introduced the new film to audiences at the Sundance Festival wearing a suit covered in 15 logos from all his sponsors and opened with the line “This film will ruin film and TV for you forever. I do hope it will start a conversation related to marketing and advertising.” - Which I’m sure it will if Supersize Me is anything to go by.

Really looking forward to seeing this – it will be fascinating to see some of Spurlock’s secret footage from meetings and find out how big blockbusters lock in their deals with brands. Definitely one to look out for later this year.

Why make a new campaign when you can recycle a classic?

As a child of the nineties, I find it really strange that stuff from the nineties is now instantly recognisable. Whether it be popular music, clothes or food packaging, these things can evoke really strong memories that take you right back to a specific moment, experience or feeling (like dancing to The Spice Girls in my bedroom and pretending to be Mel C in my Adidas ‘popper’ trackie bottoms...)

I’ve noticed that advertisers and marketiers are using the power of nostalgia more and more. Hall’s Soothers for example have just spent £1million relaunching an advertising campaign that originally ran in 1993 – the iconic ‘Kiss’ ad. I’ve seen this a few times in the past couple of weeks and can’t believe how inherently ‘nineties’ in now looks. At the time it no doubt raised a few eyebrows due to it’s overtly sexual nature. Where perhaps it doesn’t quite have this effect today, it definitely plays on the fact it looks dated and evokes strong memories of a different time, whilst retaining the overall message that Soothers ‘kiss your throat better’.


This idea of relaunching old iconic ads has also worked really well recently for Crunchie with their ‘I’m so excited’ rollercoaster advert and the Milky Way red car versus blue car animated ad.
For me, playing on nostalgia makes these ads so much more memorable, powerful and talkable. I still to this day get pleasure from watching adverts on old videos taped off the telly from when I was little as they take me right back to sitting infront of the TV when I was five watching Christmas films. For me, these adverts have the same powerful effect.

Cash for tweets scandal

Transparency. It’s a word I hear bandied around a fair bit working in PR. But is there a line that can be crossed between promoting a product or service and manipulatively deceiving consumers into making a purchase?

This week, high profile celebrity tweeters have been in the spotlight for failing to be transparent about whether they’ve been paid or showered in freebies to tweet about brands to their millions of followers. The Office of Fair Trading is investigating whether tweets that promote luxury goods are deceiving the seemingly sedated masses into buying products to be just like their favourite celebs.

What do you reckon? Do you take tweets from the stars with a pinch of salt? Or do you think Liz Hurley casually mentioned Estee Lauder ten times because she just loves their cosmetics?

Maybe this should just be seen as another PR tactic to support celebrity endorsements via social media, and clearly this works if consumers actually believe that verified celebrity accounts are windows into their lives behind closed doors. I sometimes wonder if we give Joe Public enough credit, but the government seems to think that there are serious ethical issues to think about here.

According to the OFT: “Online advertising and marketing practices that do not disclose they include paid for promotions are deceptive under trading laws.”

Here’s a few examples of these 140 character ‘adverts’ which are reportedly earning some celebs up to $10,000 a time!
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Apparently there is a brand new Playstation Move waiting for me at my office in the morning. Tres exciting.’ – Lily Allen

“CAN’T WAIT FOR MY NEW RANGE ROVER” – Henry Holland

“oooh, best mascara ever, Estee Lauder’s sumptuous” –Liz Hurley

“At BBC studio. Yeay they have Costa Coffee here. Need an espresso” – Peter Andre

It will be interesting to see the outcome of this investigation. You might be seeing ‘spon’ and ‘ad’ cropping up lots more on Twitter in weeks to come. But will these tweets lose their impact if the author clearly states that they have been paid to write it? What do you reckon?