News

Surprise Movie Plug For Small Retailer

May 27, 2008 – The Wall Street Journal publishes an excellent article on product placement involving Sex and the City, which is the New Line Cinema/Warner release that opens later this week.  Little-known women’s apparel retailer, Bag Borrow or Steal, which rents high priced fashion items, gets a favorable mention in the film, even though it didn’t pay for the product placement.
            “To take full advantage of its 10 seconds in the limelight, Bag Borrow or Steal has been heavily trumpeting its affiliation with the movie, with graphics on its site, a sweepstakes for tickets and even a contest on YouTube,” says the article by Simona Covel. “It also has been readying extra servers to handle a possible flood of orders.”
            Bag Borrow or Steal is a startup and was informed by New Line six months ago that it got exposure in the film. In the film, the assistant to Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie character admits her pricey handbags are rented from Bag Borrow. The assistant is portrayed played by actress Jennifer Hudson. Actually, Bag Borrow hasn’t seen the final film, but assumes the line of dialog made the final cut.
            Note from author Robert Marich. The article is an excellent antonomy of what happens when a minor brand gets a mention in a film. In particular, this was unplanned. Bag Borrow didn’t hire a product placement film to push it to filmmakers. My only quibble is a line in the article suggesting product placements costs millions of dollars, which is too high. Typically, it’s tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands for certain big categories, such as cars or beer.

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online.wsj.com/article/SB121184149016921095.html