Apple is back atop Hollywood’s A-list

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Because where else would you find a superhero, if not the Apple Store? Photo: Marvel Studios
Because where else would you find a superhero, if not the Apple Store? Photo: Marvel Studios

Another day, another award for Apple. This time, branding site Brandchannel has given Apple the nod in its 2015 Brandcameo Product Placement Awards for overall product placement in movies.

After three years without being the most represented company on-screen in Hollywood movies, Apple once again topped the list: appearing in 9 of the 35 movies which scored big at the U.S. weekend box office at some point in the last year, representing one quarter of all #1s.

Anyone want to argue causation over correlation?

Apple’s cameos for 2014 included the (above) memorable Apple Store sequence in Captain America: Winter Soldier, a brief iPod mention in The Lego Movie, and appearances in Ride Along, The Other Woman, Neighbors, The Fault in Our Stars, Think Like a Man Too, Gone Girl and Ouija.

It wasn’t just #1 films where Apple was a common presence, either. It also popped up in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, the tremendous Oscar-winning Birdman, the great Boyhood, Sabotage, Tusk, Let’s Be Cops and iCloud comedy Sex Tape.

By comparison, in 2013 Apple appeared in “just” 15 percent of #1 movies. While this year is certainly something of a return to form, it’s still nothing on 2011 when the company’s products were barely off-screen: being featured in a whopping 42.5 percent of all #1 movies. Between 2001 and 2011, Apple had some presence in 34.4 percent of all box office-topping films.

Not all the news was so positive, though. The Apple-owned Beats brand was named the brand featured in this year’s worst piece of product placement, for a scene in the dreadful Transformers 4 in which the villain transforms some “Transformium” metal into a Beats “Pill” speaker.

If Apple had been smart, surely a Samsung Galaxy S5 would have been a better choice for that? Or can’t you elect someone else’s product?

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