Last week I read an article in AdAge about Oreo‘s collaboration with the producers of American sit com Modern Family. It says:
The producers at ABC’s “Modern Family” have cooked up a product appearance for Kraft Foods’ popular Oreo cookie, and the results are expected to show up in Wednesday’s episode of the program.
After I read that sentence I hoped to see some creative product placement, maybe similar to iPad’s placement from the Season 1. That placement, which was analyzed in the blog post Will iPad’s product placement go into marketing handbooks? and is very very good, showed us that it’s possible to include a product in Modern Family in such a way that it’s not distracting, too blatant or even offensive.
Oreo’s product placement was really short, but it still included all three types of placement:
the brand was visible, one of the characters (Luke) used it and he also said the name of the brand.
Luke: “Dad, check it out. I made one giant Oreo.”
Phil: “Luke, what are you doing? You gotta eat it like it’s an ear of corn.”
Luke: “Genius.”
The article in AdAge said that product placement in Modern Family was a part of Oreo’s marketing activities surrounding Oreo’s 100th birthday. Apparently Kraft wanted a scene which will involve Luke Dunphy eating Oreo in an interesting way and ABC has also run a series of promotional vignettes that feature clips of “Modern Family” characters celebrating their inner child.
I have to admit that I expected a bit more. Even though Oreo’s product placement was nicely done, I thought it was way too short to be really memorable or to stand out as an example of creativity in product placement.
It that episode (S03E18) we could’ve seen another product placement: several clowns got into a tiny Mini. That quick product placement was in my opinion even better than Oreo’s.
What do you think?