Žinić as guest speaker at the premiere of The Greatest movie ever sold

The premiere of Morgan Spurlock’s new movie The Greatest movie ever sold was held at the Cinestar Zagreb Movie Theatre in early March. The movie was shown as part of Discovery’s series of socially committed documentary films, followed by a short conversation with a guest speaker hosted by famous Croatian TV host, Krešimir Mišak from the TV show Na rubu znanosti (On the edge of science). This time, the guest speaker was Nikola Žinić, creative director of Bruketa&Žinić OM.

Morgan Spurlock became famous with his cult film Super Size Me, where he dealt with the fast food industry. The Greatest movie ever sold explores the world of product placement, marketing and advertising in a movie completely financed through the placement of certain brands, many of which have been transparently integrated throughout the film. While brand placement is old news for Hollywood, it’s something totally new for documentaries.

Here’s what Nikola says:

“The thing about this movie is that the author includes his search for sponsors in the movie itself. By doing so, he exposes the entire industry, pointing at how product placement functions within the movie business, hidden advertising actually, a real issue in our advertising business.

On the one hand, the movie is superbly directed and fun, and on the other, it manages to succeed in making us think about all the fair and unfair moves brands take in order to achieve their goals, often aimed only at profit.

“The most interesting part of the film takes place in São Paulo, where the city officials decided to clean up the city of all advertising spaces. After a while, the author interviews the citizens, who claim it’s now easier for them to focus on the things that really matter. At the same time, the advertisers could invest the same amount of money previously spent on advertising, and re-channel it into product development and quality, creating more benefit for their consumers. With this, communication hasn’t been weakened, instead it relies on word of mouth and recommendations, forcing brands into being sincere, thereby into higher communication quality, and only those brands survived in the end.

During the conversation with host Krešimir Mišak and the audience, among other things we talked about the situation in Croatia, where this is poorly done, for the most part. We all know that product placement has been in the movie business for a long time, one need only to think of James Bond, one of the best product placement examples in history. Today it has all become a farce, when the only purpose of making movies is the commercial, and that is dreadful and stultifying.

Thanks to Discovery Film and Igor Rakonjić for inviting me.”

Photo: Ognjen Karabegović