Bad Guys Can’t Use iPhones: Unpacking Apple’s ‘No Villain Clause’
Disclaimer: If you don’t want to know who the bad guys are at the start of a movie, stop reading this article NOW!
Once you read this article, this might be the first thing you’ll notice when you watch your next crime thriller. Before we begin, let’s try to understand how big brands use product placements in movies and TV shows as a marketing technique.
Role of Product Placement in Entertainment Media
Product placements play an important role in entertainment media as this placement indicates how ‘cool’ it is to use a certain product or how the usage of a product can make you look “in.”
This goes for products such as clothing, footwear, mobile phones, laptops or even cigarettes. This subtle marketing technique leaves a huge psychological impact on the viewers.
Quantitative studies suggest that youth exposed to on-screen smoking are more likely to initiate smoking. Placing cigarettes in movies, TV shows and music videos to promote sales and increase brand awareness is not a new concept in advertising. In fact, it has been around since the 1800s.
As per a report, “Tobacco companies marketed cigarettes to men during the first period, from the inception of the industry’s marketing practices in the 1880s to about 1920. By 1920, the market for men was established and considered mature. The industry then turned its attention to increasing sales among women. For the next two decades, the industry added messages aimed at women to its marketing portfolio.”
Unlike the earlier days when promoting products in entertainment media was more obvious, product placement has become very subtle in recent years. This is true for any number of products and industries. Brands such as Apple, Sony, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Dell are some of the most placed brands in movies today.
Apple is by far the biggest player in product placement in movies and TV, the Macbook being the most placed product among all the other products and brands. According to Merchant Machine, which counted how often product placement occurs in 2,227 movies and 890 TV shows featured on productplacementblog.com, an Apple product appeared 1,884 times in movies.
Although Apple has the highest placed products in movies and TV shows, there are very interesting guidelines for their usage in entertainment media.
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What is Apple’s No Villain Clause?
Apple does not allow ‘bad guys’ to use their products on screen.
The director of ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ and the very successful ‘Knives Out’ Rian Johnson recently revealed in an interview that you won’t spot villains in the movies using Apple phones because Apple specifically does not allow it.
The director said in an interview, “Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies, but — and this is very pivotal — if you’re ever watching a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera”. “Every single filmmaker who has a bad guy in their movie that’s supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now,” he added.
Are villains not allowed to use Apple products?
Although there is no specific mention of the ‘villain clause’ the guidelines read, “The Apple product is shown only in the best light, in a manner or context that reflects favourably on the Apple products and on Apple Inc.”
An article from Wired from 2002, pointed out that all the good guys in the long-running thriller 24 use Macs, while all the villains were seen using Windows PCs.
Apple strictly controls how their products are used in entertainment media and how it will be perceived by the audience. Also, it never pays for product placement in movies and TV shows; unlike other big brands.
This is not an uncommon thing with big brands. They always strive to maintain their brand image through smart positioning.
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Other Products Placement Examples in Movies
Another example is the movie Slumdog Millionaire. A story about a boy who wins the famous TV show ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire?.’ He answers all the questions by associating his life experiences.
The movie went on to win 8 Academy awards. 2 particular brands were used in the movie, Coca-cola and Mercedes.
The director stated that both the brands wanted nothing to do with the rags-to-riches story about a boy from the slums of India.
In one scene, a criminal gang entices the lead actor, Dev Patel, with ice-cold Cokes in the hot Indian weather. “We used Coca-Cola bottles on the day of shooting, and we had to paint out the Coca-Cola label [later],” said Boyle in an interview.
In Mercedes’ case, Boyle explained that the car company wasn’t opposed to featuring in the hit film—they just didn’t want their brand associated with poverty. “There is a Mercedes in the other part of the film, in a really nice, posh housing section,” he said. “They’re quite happy about [the Mercedes] being seen there, but they didn’t want it seen driving round the slum,” he said.
According to this article, “Daniel Craig reportedly spurned a $50m deal that would have seen James Bond using a Samsung phone in 2015 outing Spectre because he did not consider it good enough for 007. An $18m offer from Sony was also turned down by Craig and director Sam Mendes.”
Big brands use their product placement in TV shows and movies to increase their brand awareness. This also shows the newly launched products or strengthens their brand positioning.
Very few people can pick up on these subtleties—congratulations, you’re now one of them! I bet you won’t be able to see a crime thriller the same way again.
