Do you know Ted Lasso, an Apple Original television series shows at least 1 Apple product per minute and to be more specific 1.24 Apple products per minute.
And this is not just Ted Lasso, according to journalist Kenny Wassus of Wall Street Journal, all the Apple Original top shows like The Morning Show, Mythic Quest, etc showed 704 shots of Apple Products.
This is called Product Placement or Embedded Marketing. This is not new as an advertising strategy. Pottery Barn in FRIENDS, Purell in Big Bang Theory, Dominos Pizza in Phir Hera Pheri, McDonald's in Chak De, the list is endless.
But, I think Apple has mastered it really well. According to Cristel Russel, Professor of Marketing, Pepperdine University, Apple does this using three ways.
Visual:
The screen can be divided into 9 quarters, and viewers majorly focus on the 5th quarter or the middle part of the screen.
Apple often places their products in this quarter or slowly transition their products to this area of the screen.
Audio:
Audio can be a jingle, ringtone, notification sound, or direct reference to product features or services like when characters say Facetime, iCloud, Apple stock, etc.
Audio makes people think about the brand.
Plot Connection:
Viewers build an emotional connection with the protagonist. And when protagonist uses the product like iPhone, iPad, Mac, Airpods, etc, viewers associate themselves with these products.
Apple does this very subtly. Not every character in these shows is wearing an Apple Watch or using a Macbook. It would be really unpleasant if everyone is wearing an Apple Watch in these shows.
During this time of slow sales, apple created a virtuous cycle of promoting apple products using a subscription service (Apple TV+) that was originally designed to help Apple lessen its dependence on the iPhone business.
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