Products become punch line
Times Staff
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me doesn't just weave products seamlessly into the scene: No, baby, it's got them and it flaunts them.
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Tampa Bay Times
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me doesn't just weave products seamlessly into the scene: No, baby, it's got them and it flaunts them.

Everyone knows it pays to laugh at yourself.

In Hollywood, it really pays.

With its clever use of product placement, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me simultaneously elicits laughs and offers free advertising. The movie makes fun of the often-criticized technique, yet profits from it at the same time.

"This type of product placement is sophisticated," said Robert Thompson, professor of film and television at Syracuse University. "It's a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing that gets the (producers) out of trouble because we assume that they know better."

It seems that everybody, including moviegoers, knows better. A booming product placement industry has attracted in recent years as much criticism as it has dollars. Such publicity has created savvier moviegoers, and for that reason, producers and writers normally use placement that remains inconspicuous.

But with his overcharged libido and off-color jokes, Austin Powers is anything but normal. Rather than use subtle placement, the movie does the opposite by using over-the-top techniques that are so blatant as to evoke laughs.

The most prominent example is a Heineken joke that gives the word "Heinie" a dual purpose. If it seems superfluous, that's because it is.

"The placement was a little gratuitous," admitted Norm Marshall, chairman and chief executive officer of Norm Marshall and Associates, the product placement firm that represents Heineken. "We didn't have complete control over how that was going to play out, but it works for that crowd."

In exchange for the placement, Heineken has promoted the movie in its in-store displays, which translates into millions of dollars in free promotion for the movie.

The product placement dynamic is hardly a new concept. It has existed at least since James Dean used an Ace Comb in the 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause. Countless teens followed suit soon thereafter.

But the 1990s versions of the Ace Comb _ Coca-Cola beverages, McDonald's restaurants and more than 1,000 other products _ have spawned an entire industry in which firms, script readers and studio executives exist solely to place brand names in movies.

Modern-day product placement traces back to 1982, when the Steven Spielberg film E.T. featured Reese's Pieces, and sales of the then-obscure candy skyrocketed.

More recently, however, several films have implicitly poked fun at product placement, as The Truman Show did last year by including fake products sprinkled throughout the movie.

And Mike Myers himself, who co-wrote and stars in The Spy Who Shagged Me, mocked product placement in his 1992 film, Wayne's World. An exchange involving characters Wayne, Garth and an industry executive cleverly sandwiches brand names like Doritos and Pizza Hut between statements like "Contract or no, I will not bow to any sponsor."

Critics condemn the practice of ad placement, saying it undermines the integrity of scripts. But those in the industry differentiate between product placement, which shows a brand name solely for commercial purposes, and product usage, which includes a product because it is essential to the plot.

"I can see a bunch of these comic movies getting material out of consumer brand names; that's part of the American experience," said Thompson, who has studied popular culture for more than 20 years.

Thriving on its kitschiness, Austin Powers connects with viewers through a multitude of popular-culture references.

Inevitably, that means the inclusion of brand names.

"What people don't realize is that so much of that stuff was not designed as product placement," said producer Jay Roach, who added that test groups "loved all the product references" and "said there could be even more."

One such group was largely responsible for a scene in which Dr. Evil henchman Fat Bastard belts out a rendition of Chili's Grill & Bar's Baby Back Ribs, a tune famously played in the restaurants' advertisements. "It showed up in the movie because Mike Myers was actually ad-libbing during a test screening and people were falling out of their chairs laughing," said Louis Adams, a Chili's spokesman. "It got such a great reaction that they asked us if they could keep it in."

Similarly, Starbucks never asked to be in Austin Powers. The movie depicts Dr. Evil as the leader of the Starbucks empire, invoking the dark image the coffee chain has garnered in some circles. Despite the inherent criticism the placement suggests, Starbucks may have the last laugh.

"Mike Myers came to us," said Chris Gimbl, Starbucks spokesman. "We had no control over the content but at the same time realize that this is a comedy. We have never been a company afraid to laugh at ourselves. We thought it was funny."