How ‘E.T.’ birthed product placement
As a timeless all-ages classic that holds up as a heart-warming adventure just as well now as it did upon its first run in cinemas, Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial means an awful lot to a whole lot of people.
Of course, the bean counters behind the scenes were additionally thrilled that it became the highest-grossing movie in history after earning $793million to dislodge Star Wars from its perch, never mind the $250m in home video revenue it generated from the United States alone. Ignoring the infamous video game, anything tangentially related to the titular alien was a veritable goldmine, including the product placement littered throughout the story.
Brands paying money to have their wares flaunted on-screen was hardly a new concept, but E.T. broke fresh ground for the way it actively turned Reese’s Pieces into a key part of the narrative. Even today, the brand remains indelibly linked with Spielberg’s sci-fi great, even though there are now multiple generations who weren’t even born when it first landed on the big screen.
Reese’s Pieces wasn’t even the first choice, either, with confectionary giant Mars Incorporated refusing to allow M&Ms to be the title character’s sugary snack of choice, believing E.T. would frighten children. That wasn’t something they wanted to be associated with, and it cost them a massive windfall after People revealed sales of the peanut butter cups tripled within two weeks of the film’s premiere.
Hershey’s had invested a million dollars to tie E.T. into its own advertising campaigns in what the company initially believed to be a gamble, only for it to prove shrewd beyond belief when vendors struggled to keep up with the insatiable demand for Reese’s Pieces that the blockbuster sensation had created.
Of course, plenty of other brands are subtly shilled throughout E.T., but Reese’s Pieces is what everybody remembers. In the decades since, product placement has spiralled out of control, but no other feature has managed to weave it so seamlessly into the story and make it feel as though it matters as much as the long-fingered alien interloper who wants to go home.
Mac and Me infamously ripped off E.T. and effectively served as an extended ad for McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, while Michael Bay has become no stranger to slowing the pacing of his action epics to a crawl so the camera can linger on a logo. Will Smith espousing the benefits of Converse in I, Robot stands out as one of the more egregious examples; Brad Pitt literally stopped in front of a stocked vending machine for a refreshing Pepsi in World War Z, with No Time to Die finding sponsors falling over themselves to take pride of place in the most recent James Bond adventure.
There’s a way to do it without taking the audience out of the film, but barely any high-profile titles since E.T. have managed to hit that sweet spot.
