Product placement

Have you noticed that almost all automobiles on screen in the Marvel movies are Lexus? Did you see the Pizza Hut boxes in the recent Teenage Ninja Turtle movie? Do you remember the buzz around the Starbucks cup in one of the scenes of the final season of GTO episode 4?

Image Source: https://productplacementblog.com/movies/pizza-hut-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-2014/ and https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/game-of-thrones-starbucks-cup-episode-4-viral-1202131328/

Product placement isn’t a new idea, we just seem to be more aware of the marketing efforts behind them. Product placement is a marketing technique where a product or brand in integrated into a form of media as a means of influencing viewers of the media. Sometimes these are obvious like Ryan Reynolds turducken of the marketing world with a commercial within a commercial within a commercial (click here if you missed it last fall), and other times they are less so like Superman’s weird hankering for IHOPS.

You might be wondering how product placement came to be such a big part of the media we consume and is it really affective for brands. Well as a little background, the idea behind it is to get you to think about the product you have seen subliminally and it works. Tom Cruise and Ray-bans is a fantastic example. Two iconic Tom Cruise Films, Risky Business (1983) and Top Gun (1986) created a new wave of sales for Ray-Ban and helped increase sales by 50% with Risky Business and another 40% with Top Gun. Check out CBC’s article to learn more about how Tom Cruise rescued Ray-ban in the 80’s.

Image source: https://www.spotern.com/en/spot/movie/top-gun/12854/sunglasses-ray-ban-aviator-of-maverick-tom-cruise-in-top-gun Today, we might relate them more to celebrity social accounts and music videos, but television actually holds the title for product placements according to a report from priceonomics.com. So next time you are watching television, a music video or movie see if you can spot a product placement and let us know!