The Future of Reverse Product Placement

One of the hot topics in the product placement world is the idea of reverse product placement. What is it exactly? It’s creating fictional brands in fictional media vehicles – such as films, video games, and television shows – and then launching them into real life. If you think it sounds crazy you might want to take a look at the Willy Wonka brand candy or the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., both of which began as fictional food brands in the movies, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in its original book version) and Forrest Gump, respectively. With the idea of reverse product placement behind it both fictional brands became real and are still well-known in the marketplace today.

Reverse product placement is gradually beginning to make its mark. Every now and then we are introduced to new brands originally created for TV and video. Recently the Harry Potter movies inspired a new candy brand. Marketers now want to expand this idea and make reverse product placement a more comment aspect of new product launches. The video game market and virtual worlds such as Second Life have become viable options for possible reverse product placement. Tom Wasserman of Brandweek believes this may be because the products are already familiar to a wide audience and are to some extent already “real.” People already know their name, logo, features, etc. By introducing them first in a fictional setting, marketers can monitor the effectiveness of launching it for real. This may be a more cost effective way to innovate, research, and even market new products before actually launching them. It seems like a great idea, so stay on the look out for it.