Brand placement o co-branding? Celebrities e attività di promozione nei film Zoolander 1 e 2

Abstract

Brands’ promotional strategies are shifting towards liminal areas because their main strategic object seems to be, nowadays, hiding their original purpose and making difficult, for the audience, to avoid a content that is not so easy to classify as publicity. Among all the possibilities of this peculiar strategic communication, there are all the activities of non-conventional communication located in urban spaces but also, and especially, branded entertainment. So brands produce entertainment contents that seems to be free from promotional purposes and at the same time more similar to audiovisual fictional languages.

One of oldest and most widespread strategic communication activity, also because of its opacity, is for sure product placement. This activity could be declined in various types, more and more sophisticated because they use a sort of “invisible” promotion, effective when they are connected with the plot. Brand insertion needs a coherent and plausible integration within the plot that testifies the blurring boundaries between promotion and entertainment. But what happens if we consider celebrities as brands and we focus on the practice of celebrities’ endorsement? This leads us to consider this practice also as a co-marketing activity and, in some cases, as a brand alliance activity. If we turn to analyse the motion picture sector, we will find many interesting cases but one of the most meaningful, because of the way it intertwines the storyline with promotional contents, is undoubtedly the film Zoolander (2001) and its 15-years-later sequel Zoolander 2. Those films, set within the fashion world, are full of models, designers, stylist, actors singers and pop icons playing themselves so that we can say that those celebrities are brands promoting themselves and using a strategy of brand alliance with another brand, that is the movie in itself. Moreover, is also interesting to analyse the proper promotional activities, in particular of Zoolander 2, that used this peculiar mixture between promotional and story levels. These films will give the opportunity to reflect upon celebrities’ self-branding practices and upon the concepts of brand placement and brand alliance.