Your Challenge

In the trailer for Morgan Spurlock's new documentary Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, he describes the film's subject â€" the business of product placement in movies and television â€" as "a world they don't want you to see." Perhaps he misunderstood his own subject, then, because product placement is all about getting seen, and none of the marketing executives interviewed on-camera by Spurlock appear to have any reservations about letting you know that. (When one exec he's pitching sponsorship to asks him whether his documentary has a plot, Spurlock says, "This is the movie, right now.") Spurlock's increasingly branded journey takes him on the Jimmy Kimmel show, into Ralph Nader's office, and to the headquarters of Pom Wonderful (the company that kicked in a million bucks to put its name in the title), but throughout, it's never clear exactly what point Spurlock is trying to make about product placement, other than simply acknowledging it. Then again, maybe that's enough: Would a self-promoter like Spurlock really be able to tsk-tsk a corporation for hogging the camera frame to get more famous?

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