Automobile product-placement in feature films is nothing new, but lately, it’s positively pervasive: Audi in Iron Man and Mercedes-Benz in Sex and the City and Lamborghini in The Dark Knight. The goal of such big-screen appearances, according to company officials, is something intangible: “brand awareness.” Get the name out there, get the emblem in people’s heads. But can presumptions of brand awareness based on box-office grosses translate to actual car sales? No one seems quite sure.

Audi figured some 55 million people sat through the Will Smith sci-fi picture, I, Robot — and by extension, saw the company’s RSQ concept car (pictured after the break). States a company press release: “The brand’s four-ring logo is visible for a total of almost nine minutes.” Not eight, not ten. Nine.

And now there’s Iron Man, a picture that features a whole showroom of Audi cars. Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark drives an R8 (pictured above), Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts drives an A5. And there’s a Q7 thrown around, too. In an interview with Brandweek, Audi’s Chief Marketing Officer Scott Keogh said of Iron Man, “It’s an adventure movie, which shows that what we want is not just an intellectual, in-the-know audience for our brand. We want America to know about us.” (Is that a back-handed compliment?)

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