Hello and Welcome

Advertisers are always looking for pristine spaces where their products and services can be promoted without the distraction of competing promotional messages. These spaces include school classrooms and hallways, washrooms, beaches, supermarket floors - and movies. Which is where Brand Hype comes in.

Brand Hype is a new online resource all about product placement in the movies. It has been expressly designed to encourage critical debate about this 'hypercommercial' practice among scholars, critics, media educators and students. A key feature of Brand Hype is Movie Mapper, a growing database of movies that can be searched by brand, actor, title, year, studio, etc.

As you'll see by taking a look around the site, Brand Hype also features an extensive annotated bibliography, key excerpts from recent books by scholars such as Janet Wasko and Kembrew McLeod, video clips, weblinks, and a discussion forum.

We need your help in building this critical, collaborative resource! Please consider contributing a film review or a short commentary, or lend a hand building the Movie Mapper database - just click on 'log in' and then 'create your account'. (Once you've submitted some basic information, a real live human will contact you.)

Sincerely,

Matt Soar, PhD
Communication Studies
Concordia University

Posted by matt at May 19, 2005 10:48 AM | Comments (0)