“Sex” and Brands

As soon as the “Sex and the City” full-length movie hit cinema screens it made people talk about this project, which started from a book and a serial, as one of the most successful commercial ventures in the field of mass media. According to the Kommersant-Vlast magazine, this project gave a big-time opportunity to a dozen designers of clothing, shoes and jewelry and a like number of stores and restaurants in New York, while owners of urban tourist agencies say the film was their best and absolutely free advertising vehicle.
Not a single company, be it Coca-Cola or Н. Stern, will tell you how much they have earned on the serial and the movie. Most probably, it is impossible, says Vickie Jordan, an expert. Nonetheless, we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, the expert adds.
The “Sex and the City” serial and then the film were often blamed for preponderance of embedded advertising: it has no match in terms of product placement. For the first time, HBO released the serial in 1998. During its TV screen time the serial flashed 94 different brands. As such, SACT is famous because it makes an infinite number of women swallow Cosmopolitan cocktails and stuff their wardrobes with Manolo Blahnik’s shoes, says New York journalist Lesley Bloom, adding that if Carrie Bradshaw wore it, retailers buy it and consumers consume - on an industrial scale.
Prior to the serial, the products of shoe designer Manolo Blahnik were prestigious and expensive, but not known everywhere. Now Manolo’s shoes or, for short, ‘manolos’ happen to be an attribute of well-being and a certain way of life. According to luxury experts, the same happened to H. Stern jewelry. Of course, it was well known. But it really came into vogue after SATC.
Some businessmen are still unable to believe their luck. Jennifer Fisher is the author of many jewelry pieces worn by Carrie in “Sex and the City.” For the most part of the movie people see her wearing my earrings and bracelets, while Charlotte appears in my heart-shaped pendant, she says. According to Fisher, the most amazing thing was that sales went up almost 100% even before this jewelry was seen by viewers. Several weeks before the first night, Fisher’s jewelry was casually mentioned in a single line by the InStyle magazine, which issued a story about SATC. Just three days later there were queues of people who wanted to buy exactly these jewelry pieces! People are calling me from Germany, Hong Kong and even Australia, Jennifer Fisher exclaims.
Eden Hoffman, a regional representative of H. Stern in Russia and the CIS, told RB.ru that although the serial was quite helpful in giving a lift to their sales in Russia, the company did not make any special preparations for the release of the full-length movie and did not reserve any special stocks. “However, if there will be any surge, we shall be ready to back up the sales growth,” Eden Hoffman said. H. Stern also did not launch any special advertising campaign pinned to the film and limited to a PR campaign.
Incidentally, Eden Hoffman disclosed to RB.ru that her company furnished more than 300 jewelry pieces to actresses when the movie was being filmed and some of the jewelry items were specially designed for the movie. For instance, the keychain worn by Carrie’s assistant was one of such items. However, according to the company’s regional manager, their Sutra bracelet was the brand’s most often flaunted thing in the film and Eden Hoffman did not exclude it would be purchased even at a greater pace than usually after the movie would be shown. But so far, as the clerks at the H. Stern boutique told RB.ru, they did not notice any special boost in sales.