Taking a cue from BMW's use of Hollywood film directors to promote their vehicles, Amazon has taken it to another level with their new Amazon Theater. Whereas the German automaker used feature films to promote a vehicle, Amazon is using films to promote a shopping cart full of products.
In Amazon's first featured film, "two strangers meet their match in the shadowy dreamscape of 'Agent Orange,' a psychedelic love story from director Tony Scott. Using a hand-cranked camera to alter motion and titles in place of dialogue, Scott delivers a silent film for the 21st century.
The piece is short, tight and chuck full of product placement in a way that would make you cringe if you had paid ten dollars to watch. Everything from HP Digital Cameras to Converse Chuck Taylors to Stuart Weitzman boots get some well placed screen time. It looks to me like Amazon is mostly being used as the movies wardrobe. Agent Orange would still be an okay short film without the product placement.
The films credits are overtaken by hyperlinks to individual products save for clothing which mostly links to Nordstrom's boutique within Amazon. Each film also has featured Artist Boutique — in this case director Tony Scott — with even more hyperlinks to products related to the artist. From what I've seen Amazon completely missed the music boat by using licensed muzak for background noise as opposed to tracks by bands who have consumer goods available. Something television studios have been doing fora while now.
While I absolutely hate how bad product placement has crept into Hollywood films, I think It's appropriate for Amazon to fuse consumer goods with these films as they are a store and lay no claim to being artists. With this new feature, Amazon has created a new way for people to window shop. How entertaining and useful these films are is up to your own taste, but from what I have seen so far BMW is still king of cool when it comes to using film for promotion.
Finally, leave it to Hollywood to not get the point of this at all. Minnie Driver, looking through rainbows and puppy dog glasses, had this to say about her involvement in Amazon Theater's second film, Portrait:
Minnie baby, I hate to break it to you, but Amazon is giant online store — they sell products shipped free in three to seven days, not dreams and inspiration. And in this case you are a mannequin, not a passionate innovator. Still, I have to say you did look convincing with that Jabra FreeSpeak BT250 Headset for Bluetooth Phones. Not everyone has the talent to pull that off.
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My eyes were fixed on "Agent Orange" when all of a sudden, they started to roll around in my head. I did catch about 15 seconds on the Short Film/Long Ad though
I can't believe Amazon sometimes. I ordered a book one time, and it took something like half a year to get to me. I know that's not important, but I'm still so mad about that. I get flustered just thinking about it. I'm about to be an asshat knee jerk reaction maker.
I felt kind of sick when I saw Amazon Theater for the first time last week (incidentally, "Portrait" was actually the debut film in the series; "Agent Orange" just started playing a couple days ago) but your point that at least Amazon isn't trying to lay claim to great artistry makes it somewhat easier to take. I feel bad for the folks who worked hard on the films just to see handbags, shoes, and electronic doodads listed before them in the credits, though.
Muzak is three dudes. Muzak does our company's monthly "soundtrack". This month's soundtrack has Beth Orton and other artists that I have never heard of before, but some of the tunes sound kind of catchy.
I love Minnie Driver. One day, she will be my wife.
As they say, "knowing [that you're really working as a corporate shill] is half the battle."
It's an old debate: can art and marketing get along peacefully? Can something be artistic and still sell something? To that question, I answer "not comfortably." Something can induce people to feel or think deep and profound things, or it can induce people to spend $29.95 on a handbag. The closer the two get together, the more the artistry instead feels like trickery.
Very intrising how your link to the jabra has "airbag" squeezed into it. Just out of curiosity do you think someone would buy it based on this article? It kind of attacks amazon...and after reading i would not really want to buy something there for a bit.
Casey, I disagree and I don't find that interesting at all. In fact that's probably the least interesting thing about this entire post.
However, it is interesting that Amazon chose to feature the Jabra instead of the Motorola HS810 which has a better price and consumer rating.
Also, you seem to be new to blogs. This, Airbag, is my personal website where I write about and link to whatever and however I damn well feel like.
Interesting site! And we must say straight ahead as well! As editors at the ZZ News Portal we occasionally scan the web manually for interesting feed content and we came across your site today. The dichotomy here with the Amazon post is interesting. Your material appears aligned with our readership and extend an invitation to cross exchange links. If you are interested you can find further information at ZZ OpenRing and at the ZardozZ OpenWeb. Hope you'll join us... thanks for helping to keep Cyberspace from becoming a trash heap !
Is it a full moon today or what?
YeZZ, I believe it iZZ.
Bloggers who link who they want. Were not like walking advertisements for companies. We say what we want. Bloggers are people too.
"Is it a full moon today or what?"
Not until November 26th. But I did hear "Buy a PC for a buck a day" reduced it's price to ten cents a day. Seems there's a flurry of noobies out there.
HA HA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
snort
I am not sure where I stand on the issue at hand. For one, I do believe that advertising and art are becoming closer and closer by the day. Then again, it is possible for the two to compliment one another. Either way, I just bought a book off of Amazon after checking out the films. Damn!
Then, all the good for complimenting.
Patronage is nothing new - how many of the portraits hanging in the world's great museums were done purely for artistic merit, and how many were painted because the person in the portrait (or one of her relatives) wanted to be immortalized.
Product placement is just the new form of patronage.
Michael Yake and Jeremy, good points both. Yes, perhaps the two can be made to work together: the artistry can make the marketing more sincere and more emotionally charged, and the marketing gives the artistry a purpose above and beyond making people feel something.
I see a subtle difference between art done for patronage and art done for marketing. Patronage art is commissioned for other people to look at and admire. Marketing art is commissioned to show to other people to encourage them to spend money.
Marketing sometimes has less-than-pure motives, though. It can start with a half-truth, an exaggeration, an omission, or a flat-out lie. You can try to embellish the lie with art, but in the end I think all it does is bring the art down to marketing's level, which in that case is pretty low.
“The publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers is back to her for the price of the product.â€
That quote from John Berger's Ways of Seeing is basically this marriage of marketing and art in a nutshell.
That said, ZZB — though I reply thinking that without a doubt you are a robot, either internet or human — what an original type of blogging spam! You're actually mentioning what's really going on in the article, albeit very shabbily. There is no dichotomy within the Amazon post but that error in leaving out "we" when you extend Greg the "honor" of joining your "crap" really makes the dichotomy of you being a fake asshat or a real asshat really meld into your bullshit almost transparently. Good job!
Real people who really want to link would just email the blog owner, and the real blogger would consider it. No one really interested in linking would extend the invitation in a comment which the author may never see and include the links themselves.
As a sidenote, in astronomy the use of the word dichotomy denotes the period of the moon, venus, or mercury where only half of it is illuminated. If the next full moon is on the 26th we probably just passed that phase. So apparently the moon was only half out for our "dichotomy" using friend. Coincidence? I think not!
Really, you have to look at how you define "Art". Personally, I ddefine "Art" as anything made by one or more people that evokes an emotional response. Contrast this to "Marketing" where you evoke an emotional response, that, in turn, causes a physical response (buying something).
Obviously, other people will have different definitions, but if we take the above definition, the Amazon film is clearly not "Art". The question then becomes: "Is the experience of watching [the film] enjoyable?" That becomes personal preference.
Just because something is Marketing, and not Art, doesn't also then qualify it as "bad" or "good". They are two un-related ideas.
BTW, a lot of old oil paintings are indeed refuses for marketing. Instead of marketing objects they marketed people.
I'm not sure if any of you saw it, but Frontline aired Douglas Rushkoff's new effort The Persuaders a couple of weeks ago. It was a fabulous piece of journalism focusing on the public relations/advertising world. Product placement was one of its major focuses. You should watch it if you get the chance.
I was speaking with my students about art and commerce today as it pertains to music. In the end, we decided that art and commerce can mix a bit better if intentions are true. If a song was made by an artist with only the craft of good songwriting in mind, and then that same artist decided to license his song to a company to sell a product, we decided we were comfortable with that.
However, if the intention is to turn that song into dollars from the moment of its inception, then it is spoiled. How those who enjoy the art (whether its film or music or any type of art) can sort out the intentions of the artist is not something we could figure out. Trust was about the only filter we believed we could use. "Does this artist strike me as the type to compose with selling in mind?"
I'm sooooo depressed!
We developed the BMW enhanced films with Fallon. ...sigh.... So I admit this might be sour grapes on my part. But the BMW films had cool innovative VRs, closed captioning, and director commentaries. Theses movies were downloaded, passed around P2P, burned to CDs, and eventually released on DVD. The Amazon pieces are not much more than "click to buy" hooks.
BMW Films wasn't about click throughs, it was about brand awareness and eye balls, so the story had to be worthy of watching again and again and passing around to your friends. In comparison the Amazon Theatre comes way short.
But then I might just be bitter?
This move by amazon is less like BMW, and more like a cheap hooker leaving the price tag on her panties, so you know where she bought it from.
I like Amazon. I shop from them all the time. It was really cute when they put Jon Stewart on their front page with a talking intro to his new book, but these new "films" are ridiculous. The worst form of selling-out there is for these "directors" and "actors".