Nokia 6600 stars in "Cellular" movie with good, bad features of wireless

The Nokia 6600 camera phone is an integral part of the plot of the new movie, "Cellular," (see below) that's scheduled to hit theaters September 10, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal.

Kim Bassinger plays a mother who is kidnapped, locked in a room -- and manages to make one random cellular call -- from a rotary dial phone that was smashed by the kidnapper. She reaches a random individual, played by Chris Evans, who drives around Los Angeles trying to help her.

The movie highlights the good and bad aspects of cellular use, including its value in emergencies, shooting videos, poor coverage, the need to recharge a phone and rude cellular salespeople. "Cellular" is great publicity for Nokia -- that paid for the placement -- if you believe that showing cellular's warts is good for PR.

Leveraging cellular's problems

One scene from the movie's trailer (posted on the "Cellular" Web site) shows Evans racing into a cellular phone store to buy a charger because his battery is running low.

He encouters rude salespeople and finally shoots a sign in the store in an attempt to get someone's attention (see left). The Wall Street Journal notes, the movie's tagline in its posters plays up another bugaboo of wireless carriers that is central to the plot: 'If the signal dies, so does she.'"

The movie's producers tried to get a cellular operator to sponsor the movie, but there were too many negatives aspects. Cingular, Sprint and Nextel confirmed they turned down a sponsorship.

Nokia thinks it's great

Nokia has paid for placing its phones in a variety of movies, including two "Matrix" movies and James Bond films. Showing the flaws in cellular phones didn't keep Nokia from paying big bucks (amount not specified) for product placement.

Kari Tuutti, a Nokia spokesman, says, ""the viewer doesn't feel he is being pushed with advertising in a movie. There needs to be a balance."

There are a variety of scenes where cellular's positive aspects are reflected. The article says Nokia "touted to film makers the phone's video-recording and e-mailing capabilities, and was pleased to see they are featured in film."

Greatest phone!

In one scene Evans watches a video his friend shot of a woman in a bikini (see left). His friend sends the video to himself and says, "This is the single greatest phone ever made!"

Evans drives/runs around L.A. with the 6600 held against his ear and the Nokia logo is prominently displayed in the scene when he's in the cellular store and shoots the smiley face.

The 6600 used in the movie was a functioning prototype. Of course now you can buy a commercial version. That's one of the phones I received, courtesy of Nokia, when I attended (and conducted a tutorial) at the Cameraphone Summit in Maui several months ago.

Comments

[Brian]

Good, atleast I don't have to look at another movie using Nextel phones!!! :)

[tychocat]

When the Nokia PR spokesman says that viewers won't feel "pushed" by ads in the movie, I'm guessing they figure the product placement will look more like the writer describing events that happened to him/her. There's been this trend in advertising to make ads more invisible - instead of billboards there's product placement, and instead of TV ads, you may notice street performers slipping-in cute little jingles in the middle of their repertoire. Cutting-edge ad campaigns are trying to create "buzz" instead of mere product awareness.

In this specific case, however, it's *still* just a Nokia phone with last-year's VGA camera...

[Brian]

Apple Computers does it all the time.

[tychocat]

No, Apple does product placement all the time. What Nokia is doing is one step above just having their product in a visible spot in a movie, since this flick not only showcases their product, makes full use of its specific capabilities, and mentions it by name, but the characters even reference it as the 'greatest phone ever made!" If Nokia had done this in a 30-second ad, it'd just be another ad. The subtlety is, all of this is imbedded in what's nominally a mystery-thriller movie. And this is what I referred to, when I described the goal of new ad campaigns is to be invisible, to be embedded within other form of media.

[pola baker]

Did Nokia drop "PROPAGANDA ENTERTAINMENT MARKETING" as
their product placement agency in Hollywood? Who is
handling their product placement now? Anyone knows? I
see now less and less product placement of nokia in movies. For example, it was not included in Spielberg's
THE TERMINAL.

[tabrez]

i got a problem in my handset showing system error.