Usually when audiences see product placements in movies and television, they are very intentional, positioned perfectly by companies as a form of advertisement. Producers receive oodles of cash when they agree to include different brand-indicated goods in their works. Although the heyday of chain-smoking characters and inconspicuous labels are long gone, product placements are still ubiquitous on-screen.
There’s a different kind of product placement, though, one that happens by accident. Whether through poor editing or unintentional happenstance, these unplanned endorsements gave the companies involved quite a boost. Here are 10 such inadvertent product placements, ranked.
Elle’s Fuzzy Pens In Legally Blonde
Reese Witherspoon flips dumb blonde comedy tropes in on themselves with this 2001 comedy about a woman named Elle Woods who decides to win back her ex-boyfriend by attending the same law school as him. What Elle gets instead is a new-found sense of self and proof of her own abilities as an independent woman.
Legally Blonde is full of incidental cute, fluffy stationary promos, the kind of fuzzy pens and colored paper kept in plentiful supply at the local mall. These products carry their own weight in the movie, making school fun again.
Digital Watches In Glory
This 1989 film focuses on the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regimen, the second black regiment in the American Civil War. This troupe traveled to South Carolina to fight the Confederate Army in 1863, culminating in the Second Battle of Fort Wagner.
During an impactful scene where the soldiers are marching by a group of enslaved children, the children run out and wave at them. One of the children, however, dons a peculiar item: a very 1980s digital watch. Not only is this an anachronism, but it’s an unintentional product placement that wasn’t caught in the final edit.
The Golden Globes Fiji Water Girl
The real red carpet star from 2019’s Golden Globes award turned out to be an unknown model hired by Fiji Water to hydrate the stars. This model, Kelleth Cuthbert, became an overnight star after appearing in numerous press photos that went viral.
While the Fiji endorsement was planned, Cuthbert’s placement in the photos was complete happenstance. Cuthbert claims she wasn’t aware of the company’s plans to use her image in their advertisements, while a photographer hired by Fiji Water says she decided to include the brand model in the photos since no stars were actually drinking the water. Whatever the truth may be, Cuthbert’s inclusion was not planned ahead of time.
The Chrysler New Yorker In Trailer Park Boys
Hilariously titled the “Sh*tmobile,” Ricky’s 1975 Chrysler New Yorker, which appears in nearly every episode of Trailer Park Boys, may be the most iconic prop in the series. He sleeps in it. He cooks chicken fingers on it. When it runs, he drives it to the corner mart to buy cigarettes.
The vehicle actually belongs to the show’s creator, Mike Clattenburg, and it’s hard to imagine Ricky without it. Despite its rusted-out appearance, the car has given other vintage cars like it a newfound appreciation among fans of irreverent Canadian comedies.
Red Lobster In Beyoncé’s “Formation” Music Video
The seafood chain Red Lobster got a shout-out from musical goddess Beyoncé in her 2016 song “Formation,” which was accompanied by a music video. In the song, Ms. Knowles explains that when her man is good in bed, she takes him to Red Lobster. It turns out suburbanites aren’t the only fans of those cheesy biscuits.
After the song was released, Red Lobster sales went up 33%, an outcome that required no effort on the part of the company. Talk about a sweet, buttery deal.
California Wines From Sideways
Alexander Payne’s 2004 comedy follows two friends as they travel through Santa Barbara County wine country in California. The movie, starring Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church, at times feels like one long advertisement for middle-aged winos around the world.
Sideways made wine culture hip and accessible. Miles, played by Giamatti, loves pinot noirs, and the film did a lot to boost sales of this red wine after its release.
All The Bakeware From The Great British Bake Off
While the entertaining and whimsical The Great British Bake Off did a lot to inspire legions of amateur bakers to try their hand at different recipes, it also left a lot of viewers wondering where they can acquire the various cookware and utensils used by the contestants to make their desserts and treats.
The show’s creators didn’t anticipate how many fans would run to stores in order to buy up the equipment featured on the show, and sales in all brands of products seem to surge in conjunction with the arrival of a new season of the show. Some companies now make their own The Great British Bake Off-inspired wares.
Marco Rubio’s Poland Springs Watergate
When Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, gave his party’s response to President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address, he provided bottled water company Poland Springs with a perfectly awkward public relations moment. In the middle of his speech, without breaking eye contact with the camera, Rubio grabbed a small bottle of refreshing Poland Springs water and took a big sip before returning to his oration.
Known as Watergate, this incident blew up all over the media and the internet. Poland Springs apparently had a poor marketing apparatus at the time and totally missed the opportunity to capitalize from all the free attention.
The Red Stapler From Office Space
“Excuse me. I believe you have my stapler.” Milton’s beloved red Swingline stapler was not a real product when it was featured in the 1999 film Office Space. This Mike Judge dark comedy about life in cubicle land uses a classic Swingline stapler spray-painted red to add visual pizzazz to the film’s most important prop.
After the movie was released, Swingline received numerous phone calls and requests for red staplers. The demand was so high the company decided to finally introduce a line of red staplers in 2002.
The Game Of Thrones Coffee Cup
Starbucks received a huge unintentional boost in the final season of Game of Thrones when one of its to-go coffee cups appeared in the episode “The Last of the Starks.” The cup sits in front of Daenerys, completely out of place in the fantastical medieval world depicted in the show.
The culprit was not the actor who plays Daenerys, Emilia Clarke, but the actor who plays Varys, Conleth Hill. While fans were furious over the anachronism, Starbucks was quite happy with the nearly one million dollars worth of free publicity they received from the mistake.
