“This approach to advertising seemed to be a reverse-engineering of product placement,” said Reilly Newman to The Food Institute, a brand strategist and founder of Motif Brands.
“By creating the ‘faux’ content in a way that deliberately uses certain products, the brand can put on display their products in appealing ways…What made this even more successful is the fact that Walmart was self-aware in its efforts” in crafting a new paradigm in holiday programming – RomCommerce, which Reilly said helps make up for any cringey placements or even quality of content “because they aren’t hiding the fact that this is indeed an advertising effort.”
Though a novel approach in today’s retail and entertainment world, Reilly noted that Disney has been doing this (more or less) for decades; “Disney films are just two hours of advertising…As the barrier between content and consumer interaction blurs, we can bet on more integrated content commerce.”
