Interesting marketing strategies of famous (& fictional) Christmas products
It’s that time of year again when gift shopping is in full swing, for some anyway! There will always be the last minute gift grabbers. We’ve taken a look at some of the most memorable gifts, and which of those came straight from the movies? Some fictional holiday gifts have seen extensive marketing strategies that if marketed in real life may prove more challenging than profitable! So, grab a hot chocolate and let’s delve into some of the coolest (and strangest) holiday gifts.
Talkboy (Home Alone 2: Lost in New York – 1992)
The only Home Alone sequel to feature a cameo from the president of the United States, Kevin McCalister is once again lost on Christmas but not alone! Throughout the movie Kevin uses his Talkboy, essentially a novelty voice recorder that he uses to trick staff and get a room in Trump tower. This was an excellent use of influencer marketing as there was nothing technologically new about the Talkboy, but with children seeing the toy on the big screen it became the hot toy. Even now a packaged Talkboy commands a high price as a collectible retro item. What’s interesting about this campaign is that it was carried out in reverse, the Talkboy wasn’t actually a product at the time and was created solely for use in the movie but became so popular that it was created by Tiger Electronics. Almost the complete opposite from the approach of Turbo Man, with the success credited to its use in the movie rather than any paid marketing or product placement.
ROBOTRAX 5000 (Christmas Bloody Christmas – 2022)
This lifelike Santa Claus robot puts a bit of jingle hell into the season, with a military-grade combat robot featuring the latest technology advancements is repurposed into a store Santa, because why not? Unlike Small Soldiers that saw military-grade microchips inserted into toys, the ROBOTRAX 5000 if full size and coming for his cookies!
The movie offers a humorous look at how commercialisation of technology can go slightly wrong. We don’t see much of the marketing campaign that first encourages store owners to deploy this robot instead of a traditional humanised Santa, just the TV spots announcing the recall of the very dangerous robot. Given what we know about robots and the cost of military-grade equipment, the ROBOTRAX 5000 would likely cost millions to produce and that’s without making any profit! Although we don’t see what the marketing campaign of the ROBOTRAX 5000, it must have been amazing!
It’s always a fun exercise to imagine the marketing strategy meetings of famous fictional products, that sometimes become real, and think about what we would do differently. Movies have the advantage of not actually having to pay for their marketing activities, because if they did there would likely be a very tough conversation about return on investment in the New Year.
