A Wren Says

Finally, I watched F1. The film starting Brad Pitt and Damson Idriss playing two racecar drivers throughout their season with the embattled team Apex in Formula One racing. (I assure you it is much more interesting than my one sentence summary would have you believe.) Expensify is the title sponsor of the team. The name is on their racing kits, on their cars, in the announcements. Now I find myself looking up, What is Expensify?

Turns out, it’s a real business platform to submit and process employee expenses. Of course, a company like that would make sense in the sport, which caters to a higher income bracket, likely including many business owners. To make the movie more realistic, the team needed sponsors, just like every other racing team in the world. And to make it even more realistic and not take you out of that world, the film team used real sponsors to support the Apex team. And on the brands’ side, it was an opportunity to continue to boost awareness.

I have seen far too many scenes in movies where a character drinks a soda that is turned perfectly to show the logo to the camera. Or the bag of chips staying oddly straight up on the table. Or the zoom in to display the company who produced the phone without adding additional context to the storyline. All of it takes me out of the plot and back in to the real world where capitalism reigns supreme. But when it happens in F1, it is so integrated that it just part of the world.

Brands are going to continue to evolve how they do product placement in this new media era. But maybe just maybe they’ll do it in a way that fits beautifully into the story instead of playing against it.