Product placement in films pays off in sales

THE Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle, The Beach, shot on Ko Phi Phi Leh in Thailand, led to a 23 per cent rise in tourism in that country in 2000, attributed directly to the Hollywood adventure-drama. And when the Indonesian beach resort of Bali was struggling due to the terror attacks in October 2002, the release of the Julia Roberts hit movie, Eat, Pray, Love, partly set in that town, helped its economy bounce back.

When Tom Cruise, wearing his Wayfarer glasses, launched his film career with Risky Business in 1983, the maker of the glasses, Ray Ban, sold 1.5 million pairs of the product within three years, and earned as much as US$360,000 in the first year.

The multiplier effect of popular blockbuster movies on tourism, product sales and the wider economy itself reads like a script of a movie in which, for example, an entire beach community in Indonesia rebuilt itself on the power of a film to pull in tourists.