Gossip Girl [More than just a Series]

Gossip Girl, the teenage drama series, featuring seven characters who engage in sex games, drugs and everything in between, is more than just a simple series, but a multi-million dollar product placement film, taking place in Upper East Side Manhattan.

Among other things, the series recounts the lives of very rich individuals, and the price that one has to pay when trying to become apart of this crowd (interesting isn’t it?). You’ll of course be blown away by how mindlessly entertaining this series is and how the story line seems to become better with time. You’ll also find out that the main tool of choice for these Upper East Siders (rich folks) are cell phones and laptops.

“MarketingNotesJa” published its first article on product placement sometime before the New Year, where we highlighted the fact that companies spent billions of dollars to advertise their products and services in popular movies, series and music videos.  Similar to what we’ve done before, we are going to be looking at the various product placements that have been found in this very gripping and insanely popular drama series.

Bing, Yahoo, AOL and Google have been “biting each other’s” market share all over the place, with Google being the obvious winner. Google’s search engine is so immensely popular, that the company, unlike its other search engine counterparts, does not need to spend millions to promote and advertise its services. Bing! however has apparently hit the jackpot with Gossip Girl, where Bing! is used in every scene requiring the need of search engine assistance (aren’t they smart).

Whether it be searching for directions, looking for a person, or finding the definition of a word, the Bing! logo is displayed prominently in the background, affixed to the screen of an Apple Mac Book Pro in any given scene. Some characters will blatantly say “BING IT!” much like how we normally say “Google it.”  How smart are these companies, Bing and Apple are definitely doing their homework.

Similar to the battle of the search engines, there is also a war taking place between cellphone carriers “Verizon, AT&T and T Mobile etc.” To this end Verizon has spent millions to have their brand’s logo as well as their phones, advertised and displayed in Gossip Girl’s scenes. You will see that in some of the scenes, actors may be having conversations in front of a Verizon store or may be seen receiving a text or call on a Verizon cell phone.

If you have watched this series at all, tell us what other product placements you have spotted that the team may have missed. Feel free to comment and share this post with your followers, your contribution is greatly appreciated…. Till then XOXO Gossip Girl (!)