For the very small, if not entirely nonexistent, part of the population that hasn’t heard, Twilight’s sequel New Moon came out in theatres last week. The release of New Moon has been long awaited by the millions of die hard Twilight saga fans around the globe. Smart conglomerates got in on the Twilight hype while they could. Some of the products advertised in New Moon are Burger King, American Eagle clothing company, Volvo, and AT&T.
The most obvious of these is Volvo. It is no coincidence that heart throb Edward Cullen drives a Volvo XC60. There are several scenes in New Moon and Twilight where he is seen racing to the rescue in this cool car. However, the reason for Volvo’s association with Twilight doesn’t make sense to me because the primary fan bases for the movies are teenage girls, and it’s unlikely that they can afford a car like the XC60. Still, it’s a great way for Volvo to get its name and product into adolescents’ heads. You can find a great article about Volvo’s involvement with New Moon here. Also, you should check out this funny video on all the different times you see Edward driving his car in the movie.
Another big partner is Burger King. In the movie, the human characters are shown eating food from Burger King. Not only is their food advertised in the movie, Burger King took it a step further by placing New Moon advertisements in their current commercials.
This ad was placed in Burger Kings around the country. In addition to the posters endorsing the movie, Burger King is also giving out “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob” crowns.
If you’ve seen the movie, you probably didn’t notice some of the more subtle products advertised. The phones the characters used were AT&T, which has a partnership with New Moon and also sells downloadable wallpapers, screen savers, and pictures featuring New Moon characters. You can follow this link to read more about AT&T’s partnership with New Moon.
As for American Eagle, I thought that I was probably one of the only people that noticed it’s brief appearance in the movie. At one point, Bella is wearing a pair of American Eagle jeans. They don’t explicitly advertise this, I just know because I own the same pair of jeans! When I did further research, I found that American Eagle Outfitters did have a small line of clothes endorsing the movie. There must have been more product placement than I initially noticed, because I wasn’t referring to the scene OR the pair of jeans in the picture to the left. This was definitely a great idea for sales because the main age group that already has or will see this movie are between the ages of 12 and 25, which is the same age that American Eagle targets.
In conclusion, product placement in popular films is brilliant, period.
