Debra Goldman's Postscript: Wheels of Fortune

Once feature-film product placement was a clandestine art, a way of sneaking plugs for brand names into ad-free entertainment without the audience noticing. Now, product placements have become actual marketing events: Product and movie rub together to hopefully generate a publicity spark. It is the break-through-the-clutter marketing gambit of the hour.And it can work brilliantly. In the 1995 Golden Eye, a new James Bond--kinder, gentler and played by Pierce Brosnan--got a new car, the BMW Z3 roadster. Teaser campaigns and promotions, such as a special James Bond edition of the car in the Nieman Marcus Christmas catalogue, began a year before the film even opened. The German automaker's goal was to generate 5,000 pre-orders for Z3; instead, 10,000 Bond-wannabes put money down on the still-to-come car.Now comes Volvo throwing its brand and its money-- several million dollars according to sources--behind The Saint, the latest rendering of the adventures of pop-culture perennial Simon Templar. The joining of the Saint and the new Volvo C70 is no random event. As every Volvo aficionado and Saint cultist knows, Roger Moore, the boomer-canonized Saint of '60s TV, made his getaways in a Volvo P1800, one of the hottest cars of its day. The rest of us, however, still think of Volvos as tank transport for the family. So what better venue to introduce the first coupe since the legendary Saintmobile, as well as what the car-cum-movie TV ad calls the 'new Volvos,' than this action-thriller, a TV episode on steroids.While I wouldn't go as far as to say that Volvo wasted its television ad money, The Saint is a classic case of good product placement ruined by a bad movie. In the first place, the car is no more visible than its co-stars: the Nokia PCS (a brand name repeatedly emblazoned like a banner across the bottom of the screen), the Bulgari chronometer (mentioned by a covetous smuggler) and the Macintosh Powerbook, through which the Saint keeps tabs on his Swiss bank account.Indeed, the film is half over before we get our first glimpse of the car. To get that far, one has to endure an hour's worth of bad Peter Sellers imitations from ex-Batman Val Kilmer, who plays the insouciant master of disguise as a sour narcissist in fright wigs. Finally, with Russkie thugs in hot pursuit, the Saint leaps into his red Volvo. Tires squeal, a little steel flashes and Templar outmaneuvers his pursuers in a suspenseless getaway, less than a minute long, that packs all the thrills of a '70s cop-show car chase.There's another stretch of implausible plot, during which the Russian democracy is saved and Kilmer speaks in more bad accents before the car surfaces again. We see it in the movie's final frames, carrying the Saint to his new life of virtue, charity and monogamous love. It is an epiphanic moment of Saintitude. The theme from the TV show is swelling on the soundtrack. 'Newscaster' Roger Moore's voice gurgles from the lovingly filmed Dolby-equipped dash. And the camera smiles down on the cruising Volvo, its moon roof shown to excellent advantage.Here is pure, unadulter-ated ad footage, so tiringly familiar that if it aired on TV, it would never penetrate the viewers' consciousness. As the credits came up, I wondered if a boring car ad is less boring merely because it appears in a movie. How about when it appears in a boring movie?That's the trouble with hitching one's brand to a would-be entertainment blockbuster--the advertiser loses control over the context of the message. Isn't that why they invented advertising in the first place?Copyright ASM Communications, Inc. (1997) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED National

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Debra Goldman's Postscript: Wheels of Fortune

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