By Hey! Nike it’s 2015, can we have those power-laces that you promised?
Most 80’s and 90’s kids will remember the Nike Mag shoes with power laces, and the incredible hover-board that Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox’s character) gets to try out in the epic movie, Back to the Future II (1989).
Here we are in the year of 2015, but where are the self-tying shoes that most of us have wanted for over a decade and a half now? And how does this relate to product placement? Well, check out the video below.
On a more general level, product placement is an advertising practice used by companies to promote their products or brands in movies, TV series or other media, by having the product included in a show. Usually, the companies pay the producers or media company to have their products placed in their program, and thereby subtly (some more subtle than others) promote their products to the audience of that of the programme. The companies then hope that the viewers will notice the brands or products that have been placed. So, if the viewers see the products used by a favorite character, or in an appealing context, this can potentially enhance the value of the product or brand in question.
In big blockbuster movies, this form of advertising is very commonplace. For example Sex and the City the Movie promoted 67 different brands through the use of product placement, counting Louis Vuitton, Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo.
Used the right way product placement can be a very powerful advertising technique. For instance, Hershey’s Reese’s Pieces reported a 65% increase in profits after being featured in the movie E.T from 1982. As you can see in the movie clip above, the use of the Nike brand in the movie Back to the Future II was quite an obvious product placement, but there are elements that make this case special.
For many of us the Back to the Future movies bring back childhood fantasies of how the future would look, where we would see flying cars, talking fridges and self-serving tables etc.
Back to the Future II shows a colorful and fascinating 2015, which nostalgically refers to the 80’s. Scenes in the movie such as the 80’s café playing Michaels Jackson hits, and the local cinema showing the 19th Jaws movie clearly illustrate the trends of the 80’s.
Moreover, this movie made a lot of accurate predictions of brands and products that would still be around in the future, and what they would look like. Not only is it always interesting to see predictions of the future come to life on the screen, for brands involved, this was a brilliant opportunity for product placement. This was a perfect way to make the brand come across as progressive, hip and make the target audience notice your brand in a way that would linger with them long after they leave the cinema. This is due to the fact that it takes place in the future. Several companies decided to tap into this venture, and in the movies you’ll see brands such as JVC, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Nintendo and Nike, of course. At the time, Nike was only placing their brand, as the product was futuristic and not available, that is until 22 years later.
In 2011 the first edition of the shoe was finally launched. The eagerly awaited shoes looked exactly like the ones from the movie and even had rechargeable inbuilt lights. So far, only 1,510 pairs have been produced and were sold on eBay auctions benefitting the Michaels J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson Research. This means that only a lucky few were able to get their hands on the 1st edition of the Nike Mag shoes. For instance Kid Kudu and Brian Wilson have been spotted wearing the futuristic 2011 Nike Mag shoes.
However, one of the core features were still missing, the power laces, and let’s be honest that is kind of the coolest thing about them.
Hopefully, 2015 will be the year where the power-laced version of the sneakers will be launched.
Back to the Future II was set in 2015, and in an earlier released promotional video from 2011, it is revealed that the power-laces will be out in 2015. Nike also officially announced that power-laces would be available in 2015. With this said, Nike will not confirm that it is the Nike Mag shoes that will be launched with power laces.
We’re hoping that the decision to power-lace the Nike Mag shoes was made. Most of the speculative launch dates for the futuristic laces are the 8th September 2015. This isn’t a random guess, if you look closely at the promotional video from 2011, the professor from the movie travels to this exact date to retrieve the right power-laced shoes. So wouldn’t it seem like the perfect date for the release?
Without having a time traveling melodeon It is hard to say for sure whether the launch of the Nike Mag shoes has been planned since 1989,or, if Nike has been waiting sitting on the release the of the shoes until now to match the product placement continuity from the movie. If this is the case, this is one of the most refined and well thought through uses of product placement I will have ever seen.
Even if Nike didn’t plan this campaign from the beginning, and only started looking into this, as we were getting closer to 2015, this would still contribute towards an epic campaign.
Either way, this demonstrates that product placement can be very effective as an advertising technique. In this case, the use of this concept has been able to create a huge online hype, and an incredible build up to the release of pair of illuminated sneakers with self-tying laces.
Words by Alison Rishworth-Norgaard