“Super Size Me” Director Tackles Product Placement

According to media sources, documentarian Morgan Spurlock recently screened his latest film about advertising and product placement at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, with plans for a general audience release in April 2011. Best known for “Super Size Me,” a film critical of the fast-food industry, Spurlock’s “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Made” apparently “unmasks the marketing process to bring audiences behind closed doors directly into the pitch meetings and marketing presentations which ultimately inform our everyday entertainment decisions,” according to a press release issued by film sponsor POM Wonderful®. Financed entirely by product placement, the film reportedly explores the world of co-promotion “with humor and insight,” although Advertising Age also noted a focus on “advertising’s wrongs,” such as “the marketers’ hooks in children,” and new techniques such as neuromarketing.

“I felt the best way to examine the ever-growing debate of brand integration in film and television was to make a non-fiction film that openly uses brand integration to tell the story,” said Spurlock. “The idea was to do the same type of advertising, giveaways and cross-promotion for a documentary that big summer blockbusters do, to create a ‘docbuster,’ and to try to retain total creative control along the away.” See POM Wonderful Press Release, January 22, 2011; Advertising Age, February 21, 2011.