I know there is product placement for liquor all the time in movies, but it’s almost always in the background, simply as bottles in a bar or as the brand someone is drinking for one scene or whatever. But will this leave enough of an impression to make people buy it? It seems to me that if they’re paying money to Hollywood studios to put their liquor in the movies, it ought to really make us remember it! And you know what that means: it has to be an important plot point in the movie!
So let’s say we’re talking about Titanic: They could have had the story have Leonardo diCaprio and Kate Winslet meet over a specific type of alcoholic beverage, like, say, a brand of Champagne. So she wants a glass of a particular kind of Champagne, but they tell her at the bar they don’t have it on the ship. And who do you suppose overhears her but Leonardo di Caprio? So he knows that some guy or company has brought some of what she asked for on board as cargo, since he was watching the stuff being loaded into the cargo hold, or perhaps because he had to hide in there to escape from security guards who noticed him trying to mix with the hoity-toity passengers when he’s supposed to be down in third-class with the hoi polloi. So he knows where some is, and he steals a bottle for her, and then uses it as an opportunity to meet her, and they become lovers as a result. Okay, so then he dies but she survives, and she remains so obsessed with his memory and the love she felt for him that when she is a rich old lady, she funds some deep-sea expedition, or hires some guys to dive down and bring up the case of that brand of Champagne that went down with the ship; and then when she gets it, she drinks some, and a bit is auctioned off for the highest price ever paid for a bottle of bubbly. (And so that part replaces the whole subplot involving the necklace, get it? Or perhaps the whole affair of the necklace was product placement for Tiffany’s all along!)
Okay, so here’s another example: In the movie I Know What You Did Last Summer, these young people get drunk at some bar or party, and then while driving home drunk, they hit and “kill” some guy, which launches the plot of the film. So what they could have done was to have that thing they drank be a specific kind of liquor, like, say, Jack Daniels, or whatever. So then, we know that when these kids are being killed one by one, it’s really all because of that particular brand of booze; and then if they made the characters who got killed annoying and loathsome enough, we’ll all really appreciate it and run out and buy cases and cases of Jack Daniels to say: “Thank you!” I mean, right? Plus, every time the characters are arguing about what happened, etc., they can all say: "If only you hadn't had so much Jack Daniel's!", etc. Plus, to remind and threaten them about the incident, the killer could keep leaving empty bottles or just labels of Jack Daniels for them to find, with a threatening note on it or whatever. That way, we'd all remember it specifically when we left the movie theater! Plus, it would serve as a de facto anti-drunk-driving message as well, and so they'd get plaudits from everyone in addition to selling tons of booze!
Or let’s say we’re talking about the Jackass movies, where these guys are doing all of this crazy stunt stuff: Before they start the movies, or before every stunt, the guys could say that they don’t want to do it because they’re scared or whatever, and so to give them courage, they take shots of Jägermeister. And then at the end of the movies they all say: "I couldn't have done it without Jägermeister!" Then every dumb copycat wannabe kid who goes out and injures themselves trying to replicate these stunts for YouTube videos will always first reach for a shot of Jägermeister before they do it, and so bottles and bottles will fly off of the store shelves all over the country!
See? So if they really want their product placement to stand out and generate sales, liquor companies should always try to have the movie plots written around their product so that it’s the motivating force behind all of the stories. Then we’ll all remember it, and be brainwashed into buying and drinking their liquor by the caseload! I’m telling you: it can’t fail!
