Barbie. Wayne’s World. James Bond. Top Gun. Forrest Gump. Back to the Future.
Hollywood blockbusters? Yes. Top-tier product placements? You know it.
Product placement in movies is not a new concept, but it is an art form. Think about Back to the Future and Forrest Gump and the iconic shoe game. You’re thinking of Nike, right? Did you ever feel like you were being sold Nike shoes, or were you thinking about how iconic Marty McFly’s shoes are in the second film?
I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I wanted Marty McFly’s Nike MAGs after I saw the second film. For me, it never felt like an ad but rather a cool part of McFly’s wardrobe. It felt natural for the Nike placement to be there. Even now, after years of studying brands and communications, it still feels as natural as ever.
That’s part of the art of product placement — feeling part of the character. The Ray Bans Aviators in Top Gun, the Aston Martins in James Bond films, Garth’s Reebok outfit in Wayne’s World. All of these feel like a piece of character development rather than a coordinated product placement between director and brand.
Sure, there are product placements that don’t work quite as well, but for the ones who have really mastered the art of product placement, it turns the product into a piece of pop culture zeitgeist.
Let’s take a look at Marty McFly’s Nike’s from Back to the Future II again — MAGs. In 2011, Nike actually sold a limited edition design of these shoes. Today, they’re selling for $96,000 through verified resellers. No amount of traditional marketing could have created the buzz and climbing prices the way that the cultural significance of the shoes in Back to the Future did.
A personal favorite product placement is the Ray Bans Aviators in the Top Gun films. This is a story of how product placement saved a dying brand. Prior to the original Top Gun film in 1986, Ray Bans was a brand on a steady decline. Tom Cruise donned a pair in Risky Business in 1983 and then Top Gun in 1986, and the rest was history.
Another example of the product becoming part of the character’s identity, Cruise donned two different styles of sunglasses in each movie, but each became vital identifiers for the characters in each film. His look in Top Gun — the infamous Aviators — became such an iconic look that the brand saw sales spike again in 2022 following the release of the sequel, Top Gun: Maverick. I don’t know about you, but anytime I see a pair of Aviators, I feel the need for speed.
While Back to the Future and Top Gun saw pieces of a wardrobe as its product placement,
James Bond took it to an entirely different level with the infamous Aston Martins.
An Aston Martin has appeared in every James Bond movie since the creation of
Great Britain's most famous spy, and it has become part of the allure of 007. Twenty
seven movies, or 60+ hours of content, is one way to sell a car.
Perhaps the biggest movie of the summer, Barbie dominated the box office as it became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. Really, the entire film is a 114-minute ad for Mattel who owns Barbie. While this is an obvious product placement, there are so many more throughout the film that it starts to blur the lines between an ad and a movie.
Now that we’ve established the movie is a nearly two hour commercial for Mattel, let’s take a look at some of the other product placements. Barbie has a heart-shaped Chanel bag, and Ken has three different Tag Heuer watches throughout the film. The most obvious product placement are the placements by General Motors, especially the getaway scene when we see Barbie diving into a pristine, blue Chevrolet. This scene starts to feel a bit like a commercial, but considering the nature of a Barbie movie, it feels on brand for the character’s namesake. GM eventually made an actual 30-second spot using the scene from the film.
There are at least five GM car placements in the film with Barbie’s Corvette and
the bad guy’s caravan of Suburbans. While GM’s placements feel shameless at times,
I have to give the brand credit for poking fun at themselves.They show they really
understand
the stereotypes around the owners of some of their models.
In the real world, Ken’s eyes are opened to the patriarchy, and he becomes fascinated
with the idea of masculinity since it does not exist like this in Barbieland. As
Ken is having his epiphany, a gray and black Hummer pulls around the corner. It’s
bulky, big, largely impractical and totally overcompensating. It’s all Ken needed
to understand toxic masculinity.
There are other products featured throughout the film including appearances from Birkenstocks and Duolingo. For some of these brands, placements were done on a quid pro quo basis or were always written into the script by director Greta Gerwig.
Interestingly, product placements in a film can help it feel more realistic because we are surrounded by brands every day. Either way, brands are seeing success from these kinds of product placements. Ray Bans reported an increase in Aviators sales following Top Gun films, and Google searches for women’s Birkenstocks soared 518% after the release of Barbie. As brands start looking toward organic-feeling placements, we find ourselves moving into ads that can’t be skipped and separated from the story. No matter the way forward for brands, these placements must feel authentic for success.
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Emma Magruder
Marketing and Events Graduate Service Assistant
Emma is a marketing and events graduate assistant in the Marketing Communications Online Programs through the Reed School of Media and Communications at West Virginia University. She is a graduate student at WVU and involved in PRSSA and AWSM. She could always talk about what she made in her kitchen for this week and her favorite sports! Bitten by the travel bug, she loves to travel whenever she has a few days to take an adventure.
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Marketing Communications Today is a collection of resources for marketing communications professionals filled with industry research, marketing trends, and career information about integrated marketing and data-driven communications. Learn industry insights through the Marketing Communications Today blog, podcast, as well as Integrate Online.
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