Review /// The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Mr Spurlock, the unquestionably talented director of Supersize Me fame, has been touring the world to promote the launch of his latest film festival hit – a documentary exposé on product placement, marketing and advertising in movies, funded entirely by product placement and advertising. He was in Auckland last week as part of the New Zealand Film Festival to discuss the film, which delivered some great, albeit occasionally surface-level, insights into an industry we're constantly exposed to but often unaware of.

How constant is this exposure? Look at your desk right now – I can see at least 20 logos looking back at me. According to the University of Washington, the average person is exposed to between 500 and 1,000 commercial messages each day. Unfortunately, movies provide an excellent format to deliver these surreptitious adverts to the unsuspecting public, and Mr Spurlock has gone to great lengths to pull the wool from the public's eye.

It's an often discussed topic that advertising is merely shouting at the consumer, so product placement allows a more natural way to highlight the link between opinion leaders in films and the products the manufacturers want you to consume – this isn't a new phenomenon. What is new however, are the lengths marketers will go to deliver their message, and the creativity they're employing.

Utilising now common industry tools like 'neuro-marketing' (the study of the brains response to stimuli) with the aim of triggering the release of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centres), and greater use of 'faction' (a story-telling format that, broadly speaking, depicts real figures and actual events woven together with fictitious allegations, Spurlock aims to both highlight their use in common mass media, and show how you are being manipulated by them. The end result? As one expert in the movie puts it, "sell, sell, sell".

While telling a woeful tale of repeated slap-downs and rejections in trying to secure sponsorship (640 odd companies approached to secure 20 or so sponsors), the movie provides an inside peek into the world of brand managers and marketers. Having generated more than 5,000,000,000 global impressions alone post-Sundance, the sponsors are rapt. But it wasn't without plenty of footslogging, lengthy negotiation and trepidation on their behalf.

The best example? Naming rights sponsor POM Wonderful – a Californian pomegranate juice company that paid US$1,000,000 for the privilege – drafted a mammoth set of terms and conditions, so it took ten months to complete the deal. Consider this from apparently one of the least risk-adverse companies in the United States, willing to take a huge plunge (Spurlock wasn't exactly gentle to the last organisation he made a movie about – McDonalds). Yet as Lynda Resnick, the brains behind the POM Wonderful operation said, "I'm a Jewish mother, I couldn't not have concerns."

All said, the documentary delivers great insight into a somewhat shady industry – the who, what and critically, how much, that goes on behind closed doors. The Q&A session however was slightly marred by some poor audience questions ("Morgan, what do you like to cook at home?") and even poorer heckling and gay quips by Spurlock as some gentlemen left the crowd – one of whom turned out to be New Zealand Herald reviewer Peter Calder, resulting in a vitriol-filled column lambasting his performance ("I gather that this is not your first time here, but I guess you weren't paying attention last time. If you had been, you might have noticed that – with the possible exception of rugby-club changing rooms – we have moved on a bit from cheap homophobic jibes.")

It's a great documentary, and well worth a watch – but a particular thanks goes, of course, to the sponsors:

Amy's Kitchen; The Aruba Tourism Authority^, Ban; Carrera Sunglasses; Get It For Free Online; Hyatt' JetBlue; KDF Car Wraps; Merrell; Mini; Solstice Sunglass Boutique; Trident; Carmex; Movietickets.com; Old Navy; Ted Baker; Petland Discounts; Seventh Generation Inc.; Sheetz; Thayers; and last but not least, POM Wonderful (now available in my local supermarket for only $4.99 a bottle).

https://youtube.com/watch?v=T4Ng2P3zxfM

Will Seal is a Senior Account Director at Porter Novelli