Product Placement Is Coming to Town

Christmas and advertising go together like turkey and gravy. As the season of giving, it has become the season of shopping, with a guaranteed boom for the retail industry set off each year by the starting gun of Black Friday. We also see a boom in advertising, with every retailer appealing to customers’ festive spirit by decorating their stores, releasing limited-edition product lines, and creating idyllic Christmas scenes in their television campaigns.

In 2021, advertising has developed so that product placement is now a key component of any good Christmas campaign and savvy holiday movie. The film and television industries’ love of Christmas stories and the context of gift giving offer plentiful opportunities for brands to present their products as aspirational or thoughtful, associated with the excitement of Christmas. The celebratory nature of storylines set in the festive period, often featuring parties and dinners, also serves up bountiful opportunities for food and drink brands to gain placement.

The key benefit of placing a brand in a Christmas film is of course that such films are re-watched year on year. Like a good Christmas song, festive films become embedded in culture as they are revisited every time the holiday rolls around. This means that the potential reach of their product placement spans not only the world, but the rest of time. Christmas films have an emotional claim on audiences, and the products featured in them – whether children’s toys, sugary soda, or designer accessories – are remembered for their association with them.

Here, we’ve rounded up some of the most memorable and effective placements of Christmas films over the years, from cult classics like Home Alone to potential future classics like the recently released Happiest Season…

Home Alone (1990) – Pepsi

When Kevin McCallister’s (Macaulay Culkin) extended family comes to stay before the family’s big Christmas trip to Paris, to his dismay, he is forced to share a bed with notorious bed-wetter, cousin Fuller (Kieran Culkin). It’s no wonder that Fuller’s mum tells him ‘go easy on the Pepsi’ before bedtime. Interestingly, in Home Alone 2, Kevin’s soda of choice is Coca-Cola.

Home Alone’s cultural impact is palpable today as Adidas’ new collaboration with the film proves that its association is a hot commodity. Their newly released Home Alone x adidas Forum Low takes inspiration from the sneakers that Kevin wears in the film, with signature red stripes over a white shoe and added accents like burn marks which reference Kevin’s troublesome antics.

 

Elf (2003) – Etch A Sketch

In Elf, Buddy (Will Ferrell), a human being raised by the elf community, likes to communicate by Etch A Sketch. When he feels rejected by the biological family he is visiting in New York, this is how he chooses to write his goodbye letter. The Etch A Sketch therefore becomes synonymous with the festive spirit of the elf community and the antics of Christmas-loving Buddy, whose skills are so refined he even uses the toy to decorate the department store that he works in with a portrait of the Mona Lisa. With such extensive screentime scripted, Ohio Art Co., the toy’s owner at the time, happily cleared the placement with the Elf filmmakers and prepared for a boost in sales like the one they experienced with Toy Story in 1995.

 

Four Christmases (2008) – Xbox 360

When Kate (Reese Witherspoon) and Brad (Vince Vaughn) visit his family’s home for Christmas, they bring expensive presents for all the family, including an Xbox 360 Elite for their nephews. Little do they realise, the rest of the family had agreed on a $10 spending cap…

 

The Night Before (2015) – Red Bull

Childhood friends Ethan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Isaac (Seth Rogen) and Chris (Anthony Mackie) have spent every Christmas Eve together since they were kids. With major life changes on the horizon, this will be the last year of their tradition, so they embark on the ultimate night out. Chauffeured in a Red Bull branded limousine, it’s clear that they’ll need their energy.

 

Noelle (2019) – iPads

Noelle Kringle (Anna Kendrick), daughter of the late Santa and sister of his successor, is determined that her brother’s first Christmas as Santa Claus will go smoothly. Heavily involved in preparations for Christmas Eve, she helps sort through the nice and naughty lists and organise presents for the children of the world. It is a running joke throughout the film that all children want an iPad for Christmas, with Noelle claiming ‘It’s not just about the presents we get but the one we give – love and understanding … and an iPad’. Highlighting the ubiquity and desirability of the iPad, Noelle utilises the gift-giving storyline to create a continuous verbal and visual placement for Apple.

 

Happiest Season (2020) – Moët & Chandon

When Abby (Kristen Stewart) spends Christmas with her girlfriend Harper’s (Mackenzie Davis) family for the first time and she finds out that she has been kept a secret from them, the perfect family Christmas that she expected doesn’t go to plan. However, like any Christmas holiday, with family tensions and disagreements also come lavish dinners and parties. Moët & Chandon provides champagne for two such parties, reinforcing its image as a tipple for the special occasion.

 

Overall, it seems that despite the trials and tribulations of the Christmas period that we see in the movies – family disagreements, lost presents, and sold-out toys – the brands featured in these storylines always find a happy ending in product placement. As we have seen with the iconic line ‘go easy on the Pepsi, Fuller’, Christmas films and the products they reference, are remembered for generations, with onscreen exposure promising brand recognition for years to come.