[locusjag]

There are upsides as well as downsides to brand names getting featured on the screen. TV shows and movies evince heavy emotions on both ends of the spectrum - love and hatred. And these emotions can ensure a dream run for featured brands or they can wreak havoc on them.

'80s hip hop stars began popularising certain sneaker brands among the African-American community. Those shoe manufacturers have witnessed a positive effect of unasked-for branding by hip hop legends.

Lesser known Cognac brands like Courvoisier have had a mixed bag; Courvoisier was unwillingly featured in many famous hip hop music videos and in the lyrics of rap songs and today it is a "hot" brand among the African American community. The company's CXOs were famously miffed at being linked with the gangsta-rap image. They couldn't do anything about it. The company had wanted an elitist image for their Cognac product and they've ended up as a Cognac brand for the streets.

Here's something that struck Tommy Hilfiger's sales in the early 2000's (from https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/0...3004713b677c):

The most loyal fans can hijack a brand and make serious trouble for a company. "As good as those groups can be, they can take control and doom a brand," says Douglas Atkin, partner at ad agency Merkley Newman Harty in Manhattan and author of the upcoming Cults and Brands. Consider the fate of Tommy Hilfiger, which is reorganizing after sales plummeted last year. The same hip-hop crowd that made the clothes famous eventually helped to sink the brand, after white suburban kids—once drawn to the style in large numbers—decided they'd had enough of the gangsta look.

Coming back to the Indian context, having the Thar featured in Kaala simply cannot go wrong for Mahindra.

But otherwise, having any automotive brand prominently featured on the screen has its risks. Automotive companies spend so much on setting a narrative and creating a brand image for some of their products. They won't like it if those products get stereotyped on the screen in undesirable ways.

Lastly, though slightly OT, quoting an example about Harley Davidson's sensitivities from the above Forbes article:

A company's worst fear is that its brand will be kidnapped by a fringe group. Harley winces every time the Hell's Angels create headlines, as they recently did when the group was linked to a string of murders in Canada.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by libranof1987

Can there also be a non-commercial and more, legal reason for this?

Originally Posted by arvind71181

I thought it was more to avoid unnecessary litigations. For e.g. if they show the car to crash, or the car's brake fails etc.

You guys might have a point too. Now, cellular operators are miffed with the movies:

Scientific 'temper': There's a scarcely a religious group — majority or minority — which Indian movies haven't offended, not to mention offending sensibilities of women, sexual minorities, et al. This, however, is a completely new script — Rajnikanth and Akshay Kumar's multilingual starrer 2.0 has earned the ire of India's telecom companies, whose representative, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has filed a complaint against the flick with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for being unscientific (yup, you read that right, and no, the COAI wasn't high).

Raw nerve: According to COAI, the movie promotes "obscurantist and anti-scientific attitudes against mobile phones, towers and mobile services", is against public interest, defames telecom companies and violates the telecom sector's constitutional rights by depicting "mobile phones and mobile towers as harmful to living creatures and the environment including birds and human beings on account of electromagnetic field (EMF) emissions from them."

Ultimatum issued: The cellular operators union, which has Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and Reliance Jio as it members, representing 90% of the country's telecom business, has asked for a revocation of the CBFC certificate granted to the Rs 500 crore movie. Opinion on whether cellphones and cellphone towers cause cancer is divided — while the WHO says cellphone usage increases the risk of cancer, which is supported by a study conducted by IIT Mumbai, according to the American Cancer Society, current studies to prove the link between cancers and cellphone usage are inconclusive.

Full Article Here

[Jaggu]

It is for legal reasons that the badges / identification is blanked off. One from liability, and another from brand promotion angle. This has been on for quite sometime, if you watch the Hindi soaps you would notice it very easily. Same thing when it comes to product commercials that are related to automobiles, the badges would be carefully blanked out.

Disclaimer - well I don't watch the soaps per say, but I have to endure it in the background, when the better half takes over the TV

[blackwasp]

Originally Posted by vinair

I...it showed the actor sitting on the Thar ...

Thanks to Shubham Singhal for sending this information in. Heartfelt gratitude for sharing it with other enthusiasts via this Team-BHP page!

Team-BHP members are identifying the Rajnikant movie Jeep as a Thar, but as clearly seen in post #13, it probably is an MM540-550.
Points supporting my claim-
1) The empty indicator place on the grill which used to come on erstwhile Jeeps.
2) The headlights are ever so slightly touching the vertical lines on the grill which also was an earlier design most probably an MM540 as later models, including Thar, come with a grill where headlights and the vertical lines are clearly apart.

[Sutripta]

It might also be that companies paying for product placement insist that rivals products be 'orphaned'.

Regards
Sutripta

[shankar.balan]

Originally Posted by blackwasp

Thanks to Shubham Singhal for sending this information in. Heartfelt gratitude for sharing it with other enthusiasts via this Team-BHP page!


Attachment 1823170

Look at the mudguards. The design style is very reminiscent of the MM540DP and MM550DP. I m only speaking from memory but this does look exactly like the MM’s we had when my Dad was on the plantations all through the late 1980’s and 1990’s till he retired.

[GTO]

So, Buick paid big bucks for product placement in the show "The Good Wife". You can see her driving her Buick all around, many scenes are in the car making it look good and also, they have plugged the features a few times.

But Buick didn't stop at that. They would've insisted that the badge on the Ford Crown Victoria and Mercedes-Benz be removed too. No money, no honey

[shortbread]

Originally Posted by vb-san

In many of the recent movies if you see a rich man in a Ford Ikon/Fiesta, or something like a Gen 1 Octavia, rest assured that s/he is going to get into a crash and die. And in those cases I have not seen them hiding the logo

True, previously that role was the domain of the erstwhile Contessa. The moment a 'wealthy' character was seen travelling in a Contessa on the road, ones spider-senses could feel the upcoming mishap. A villains lorry OR roll down the cliff OR an explosion. When death and wealth had to hand in hand in Indian cinema, the Contessa was the go to car.

Prior to this its was the large finned American saloons, eg. Plymouth, Impala etc...