Memphis, Tenn.  — In Cast Away, Tom Hanks shares the screen with two unlikely co-stars: a volleyball he calls Wilson and a cargo airline named FedEx.

Wilson is Hanks' only companion on a South Pacific island where his character is stuck for four years after a FedEx jet crashes in the ocean and he washes up on shore as the lone survivor.

FedEx is the company he works for as a time-obsessed, workaholic troubleshooter.

While Cast Away likely won't do much for volleyball sales, it could boost business for Memphis-based FedEx Corp., the world's largest cargo airline.

From opening scene to closing credits, references to FedEx constantly pop up, and the corporate image the movie offers of a can-do, service-first, caring employer is one any company would love.

“It says all the right things about our brand,” said Gayle Christensen, director of global brand management for FedEx Services.

“Product placements” are common in movies, with Coke cans, Snickers bars or Kleenex boxes showing up as subtle brand-name reminders, but FedEx's place in Cast Away is different.

“We're really a character in the movie. We play a much larger part than product placement,” Christensen said.

Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a likable but obsessed FedEx executive who travels the globe making sure the company's packages arrive on time.

“We live or die by the clock,” Noland tells a group of FedEx trainees.

Complaining to Russian co-workers about a brief slowdown in the daily sorting of packages, Noland grumbles that the loss of just a few minutes here and there “and the next thing you know, we're the U.S. mail.”

Christensen said the film's producers came to FedEx with the movie idea, and though some parts of the script were bothersome, such as the plane crash, the company decided overall it was a winner.

“It's clear that the plane crash is an act of God and the pilots do a really good job,” she said.

FedEx has had no fatal crashes with its primary fleet, Christensen said.

Hanks is credited with the basic idea of placing a man wrapped up in the modern, fast-paced business world on a deserted island where he has no one to depend on but himself. What better character for such a story than a FedEx troubleshooter?

Christensen said FedEx made no direct payments nor drew any for its part in the movie, though the airline did ship some equipment free for the filmmakers.

FedEx plans no promotions tied to the movie, but Christensen said the film will help explain, especially to foreign customers, how the company operates.

“Millions of people around the world will see this movie and it is definitely worth millions of dollars to us in the favorable impression people will get from this,” she said.

FedEx founder and Chairman Frederick Smith, known as a man who likes his privacy, makes a brief appearance in the movie at a welcome home ceremony for Noland filmed at the company's Memphis headquarters.

Christensen said Smith knows Hanks from their work together on the World War II memorial in Washington and he is acquainted with Cast Away screenwriter William Broyles Jr., who like Smith is a former U.S. Marine with service in Vietnam.

In the film, directed by Robert Zemeckis, Noland uses packages from the crashed jet that wash up on shore to entertain him and help him survive. In one package is the volleyball on which Noland paints a face using his own blood. He names the ball Wilson, for the Wilson Sporting Goods Co. (Hanks' real-life wife is named Rita Wilson.)

Another package contains ice skates, which Noland uses to craft axes, and in another are videotapes. Noland uses the tapes to tie pieces of a raft together.

But one package he doesn't open. It carries on its shipper's address a drawing of angel wings. Like the good FedEx man he is, Noland delivers the package after his return to civilization.