Getting product placement past a cynical audience
Product placement can be an effective marketing strategy for brands, but while some attempts can be over the top or too blatant, the art of subtlety is the way forward for effective audience engagement, writes Lukass Strungs, strategist at Affinity.
We open on a severed Transformer’s head hurtling towards a busy T intersection in Philadelphia. There, a Bud Light delivery truck is speeding through the carnage.
It’s going fast, but just not fast enough and the Transformer’s steel skull collects the tail-end of our truck and explodes. Tragically, hundreds of bright blue Bud Light bottles have scattered across the tarmac. The camera goes in for a close up. Under flaming wreckage and tangled wires we see the beautifully packaged Bud Lights, now destroyed.
Our hero, Mark Wahlberg, greasy, dusty and sweaty from blowing up his robo nemesis is thirsty. So he cracks open one of the Bud Lights. Froth explodes from the bottle. Mark chugs half of it before smashing the bottle on the ground.
“The Bud Light truck could feasibly become a Tooheys New truck when the film is shown in our market.”
And then a bunch of Aussies all tweeting* why is there Tooheys New in a clearly American film? All speculating on how obvious that attempt to sell was, product placement to be good needs to be subtle.
*using whatever social platform is relevant