‘The Boys’ Showrunner Eric Kripke Says Amazon Asked for Digital Product Placement: ‘No Thanks, but We’re Definitely Making a Joke About It’
Amazon approached the team behind “The Boys” about doing product placement in the series where a product can be digitally switched depending on who the person watching it is, writer Eric Kripke tweeted Sunday.
“Y’know, custom digital product placement is a real thing, you guys,” he wrote. “Amazon pitched it to us for #TheBoys, we said no thanks, but we’re definitely making a joke about it in Season 4. Then we did.”
The joke in question was in this week’s episode, “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son,” when The Deep and other Vought representatives announced a new feature for Vought+: a product that could change based on your demographic, including race, such as an IPA being switched out for cognac when Black viewers watch the show. The idea was pushed in the show as an initiative around the Vought-sponsored superhero team The Seven’s Black members, including A-Train and Sister Sage — and Black audience members in the show were, of course, not thrilled with the concept.
Kripke linked to a 2023 article from Marketing Brew about the limitations that currently exist in terms of virtual product placement. Both Amazon and NBCUniversal announced plans to beta test tools meant to expand their respective digital product placement capabilities in 2022, but a year later, the theory had yet to be fully realized in practice.
The goal is to make it easier to place products in shows and movies. Instead of traditional product placement, which gets brands involved in pre-production for what could be years before a show debuts, this technology allows brands and products to be added into a show after it’s already begun to air.
It’s also possible that virtual product placement could create opportunities for products to be swapped out for one another, as seen in the show.
The reality of virtual product placement is that, so far, it can take up to six months to get a new deal established — everything from getting approval from the shows to designing a virtual product that looks realistic enough that audiences don’t question it still takes time.
The post ‘The Boys’ Showrunner Eric Kripke Says Amazon Asked for Digital Product Placement: ‘No Thanks, but We’re Definitely Making a Joke About It’ appeared first on TheWrap.