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And there are updates to the old bait-and-switch tactics. As part of the launch of a new car in Britain, Mercedes commissioned film director Michael Mann and Oscar-winning actor Benicio Del Toro to make an authentic-looking trailer featuring quick shots of the sleek new SL sedan for Lucky Star, a film about a slick guy blessed with mysterious luck that brings him women, fortune and fame. The trailer played on TV and in theaters across Britain in July. But the film it promotes doesn't exist--and only when viewers go to a website advertised in the trailer is the truth revealed. Lucky Star was clearly inspired by BMW's The Hire, a successful series of online short films that has ushered in a wave of similar projects from Ford and Chrysler and others.
Blurring the lines between content and commerce seems to be the order of the day in Hollywood. Ad agency Interpublic is said to be considering buying both a literary and a Hollywood talent agency to help find TV and film projects in which it can place its clients' products. Just a few weeks ago, Miramax Films and Coors Brewing Co. announced a long-term alliance that will include product placement in at least five films over the first three years. Meanwhile, Push, Nevada, a new prime-time drama-reality show, produced by Ben Affleck's company LivePlanet and scheduled to make its debut on abc this fall, will prominently feature products from Toyota and Sprint. "If you can make the costs more palatable, you have to look at it," says cbs chief executive Les Moonves, who, while being bombarded with product pitches from advertisers this year, is thus far restricting the cameos to reality shows like Survivor.
Traditional product placement is fast evolving into what agents call brand integration, in which products take center stage. Earlier this year, cosmetics maker Revlon became an integral part of a story line played out over three months on abc's soap opera All My Children, a groundbreaking deal that other advertisers hope to duplicate. BMW's Mini car, a star of this season's product-packed movie Austin Powers in Goldmember, will be the linchpin of a heist in next summer's Paramount release, The Italian Job, starring Mark Wahlberg and Edward Norton. "The Mini plays the real hero. It's almost another character," says Tera Hanks, executive vice president at marketing shop Davie-Brown Entertainment, a unit of Omnicom, where placement deals have increased tenfold in the past few years. Meanwhile, the Mini's marketers are turning the car into a conversation piece by plopping Minis down among the seats at sports stadiums in Oakland, Calif., and New Orleans, and resting them atop suvs that drive around cities.