The Marketing Power Of The Big Screen

Cinema has long been a showroom for the latest cars on the market and companies spend vast amounts of money on product placement as it is a hugely effective marketing tool, especially with Hollywood blockbusters that will be seen by millions of people on the big screen across the world.

There have been many memorable films involving cars through the years, from Steve McQueen's Bullitt, featuring the iconic green Ford Mustang speeding through the streets of San Francisco in pursuit of the bad guys, through to the 2001 smash hit, The Fast and the Furious, where an undercover cop becomes embroiled in the world of street racing in Los Angeles, featuring suped up Hondas, Mazdas, Nissans and Mitsubishis.

Many car manufacturers have used new models in films which has worked as an extremely effective marketing tool. In the 1995 James Bond film, Goldeneye BMW sued the film to showcase their new sports car, the BMW Z3. The film was a huge success, with Pierce Brosnan starring as Bond for the first time and with Goldeneye being the first Bond movie for six years. BMW were inundated with sales requests for the Z3 and it became a very popular marques for BMW over the next few years.

In fact BMWs have been heavily featured on film for decades. One of the most memorable moments involving a BMW on the big screen in recent years was the 1998 Robert De Niro film, Ronin, which features one of film's greatest car chases involving a BMW 525i being speeding through Nice in pursuit of a Peogeot 406. The shrill of French Police sirens and the screeching of wheels through the corners is only outdone by the revving of the BMW's engine speeding through the tunnels and windy streets.

The BMW 735i made an overstated performance in The Transporter, where British actor Jason Statham couriers packages - drugs usually and in the case of the plot, a stowaway lady who he naturally falls for. BMW lovers and martial arts fans would have been drooling at The Transporter on first viewing! The BMW's sleek black lines glisten in the sunny climate of the French Med, as he speeds through beautiful surroundings.

There have of course been some cinematic rotten tomato moments involving cars, none more so that Bond's invisible Aston Martin in possibly the worst Bond film ever, Die Another Die. And there have been some car films that have bordered on failure, including the sequel to The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious.

There is no doubting that when a new car is watched by a packed audience that many will leave the cinema dreaming of owning the car that they have just seen on the big screen. In that sense the vast amounts of money spent by car manufacturers on product placement in movies is worthwhile. Most of the time, unless the film is a stinker, it has the desired effect and interest and anticipation grows as to the release date of the protagonist car.

Cinema, as well as being a huge cultural sphere, is also a powerful advertising and marketing tool, not in the sense of brain washing the viewer but in terms of providing the 'wow factor' that gets people talking and adds an element of 'cool' to the product, in this case the car.

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