mercoledì 28 dicembre 2016

Gossip Girl on a Vespa : product placement in glamorous New York

I am not sure if you ever heard about product placement but you definitely witnessed it many times: it's when a brand is subtly advertised in a context where it is not supposed to appear, like a movie instead of a commercial, for example.
For the sake of clarity, there's nothing wrong in showing a brand in a movie, but that must happen accidentally; when the main purpose is to advertise the product, it's kind of cheating on the audience. For instance, when a character is driving a Vespa because that was the way the authors pictured him or her, it's okay; but when the production of the movie contacts the marketing department of Piaggio (which produces the Vespa scooter) and it is agreed to show a character driving a specific model for a certain amount of time, and the company Piaggio is paying for having the scooter displayed without clearly telling the audience... then it's product placement. Sometimes it's hard to say whether it is product placement or not, but in the majority of the cases, there is no doubt.



This video, taken from Gossip Girl (Season 1, episode 5), features Blake Lively (as Serena van der Woodsen), Penn Badgley (as Dan Humphrey) and... a Vespa. What do you think?

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