I imagine the change in things would be that brands would stop paying so much for product placement. Which would wind up with a much more natural movie, instead of the forced placement that is usually as glaring and distracting as a #ad on the screen.

I think I know why it's different: James Bond is a fictional character and if he likes Smirnoff vodka that doesn't mean Daniel Craig likes that brand.

Daniel Craig is being paid to portray James Bond, but that doesn't need to be pointed out, right?

I suspect if movies had to put #ad on screen whenever a product is placed, it would be like the California cancer warnings. They would soon become meaningless and invisible.

> I think I know why it's different: James Bond is a fictional character and if he likes Smirnoff vodka that doesn't mean Daniel Craig likes that brand.

Can you elaborate on why this makes a difference? On the theory that people buy "sponsored" products because they wish to feel or display an affinity with the sponsor, James Bond, the fictional chracter, is a much more effective sponsor than is Daniel Craig, the actor.

    I wish that I could be James Bond
    with dry martinis, cars, and blondes,
    a PPK, and sharp things to say
    when I'm about to get it on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU9cK9d0aWw#t=56

No, I can't really articulate it.

Maybe it comes down to feeling that the cost of #ad in the corner of the movie is much higher than the value of doing so.

How about when ESPN televises a NASCAR race. Ever car is covered in ads, do they have to have #ad on screen for the entire broadcast?

Although, if a disclosure rule that would lead to broadcasters removing their bug watermark in the corner came along, I would be all for that.

Daniel Craig isn't the person at stake here. Neither is James Bond. The point is that the product is on screen because someone made a monetary deal for it to happen. Call it "placement", but companies wouldnt be forking over money to place their products if it wasn't valuable. Thats what an advertisement is, paying for exposure. The #ad on screen would be because the producers received money for the ad, not the actor speaking the lines that someone else wrote for him.

If James Bond went on a 5 minute spiel about how Smirnoff is the only good Vodka, instead of subliminal product placement, would that be considered an ad? How much of the movie has to be about Smirnoff before it's legally just a 90 minute Smirnoff commercial.

Medicine commercials on TV already have to announce that someone is a paid actor, it's not completely unheard of.

People would hate having something akin to #ad in the movie itself. I don't really mind so much paid product placement (I more mind places not showing brands because of copyright, as it is unnatural).

But there are other ways to reign this in - through regulation. Italy, for example, requires placement to be natural in the narrative of the movie, and there are other regulations in places. I think one of the more helpful things would be to list the companies paying for placement OR a list of the products placed in a prominent place at the beginning of the end credits or as a screen in the beginning credits - say after the studio logo.

Information for the Italy regulation came from: https://www.pwc.com/it/it/publications/assets/docs/product-p...

That's interesting. Do you know how many movie have been blocked from being shown in Italy because of unnatural product placement?

For example, there was a different Bond movie where everybody was using Sony phones. That was pretty unnatural because Sony wasn't a terribly popular phone brand at the time.

I wish I had that information! Alas, I do not. I'm going to guess that a lot of the offending scenes can be cut out of the movie with no actual effect on storyline. I did get the impression that it is more that the filming had to be natural in the situation, and not necessarily that the brands being used were common. If the scene was such that Any phone being used would have seemed natural in the scene, then it'd be allowed. Random shots of vehicles, obvious scenes shot to include a computer logo, focusing out on a character only to have the soda on the table come into focus might not be allowed.