BRIDGET THE WALKING AD
How her new movie’s packed with product plugs (v.v.lucrative!)
BRIDGET Jones’s Baby opened earlier this month and is a critical and box office hit. Everyone has fallen back in love with Bridget, the daffy diarist played by Renee Zellweger, who is older, almost wiser and accidentally pregnant by one of her two lovers. Yet as the two‑hour film spools through the zany ‘who’s‑the‑daddy’ plot, something else is going on in the background — something much more devious.
In subtle but very persuasive ways, cinema‑goers are bombarded with sneaky advertising from the opening scenes until the credits roll.
The whole film is rife with product placement; the kind of silent, stealth marketing that adds untold riches to a movie’s profit margins.
From the branded Clearblue pregnancy testing kit Bridget uses to confirm her impending motherhood to the tube of Pringles she snacks upon in a moment of Bridget‑ian crisis, she is a walking billboard upon which an astonishing variety of merchandise and commodities are advantageously displayed.
She wears identifiable bobble hats and cashmere cardigans from the chic Brora woollen company, she walks across London’s Tower Bridge in a £400 Diane von Furstenberg lace wrap‑dress and is at a celebra‑ tion where Taittinger cham‑ pagne is notably served.
Elsewhere, she and a friend buy wellingtons from the fashionable Muck boot company, she tucks into an Ottolenghi takeaway and she obviously does her food shopping at Sainsbury’s, as she is seen lugging its distinctive orange carrier bags home with the logos all nicely displayed.
Of course, the big deals between household brands and film companies are strictly confidential, but some companies are just delighted to be included in a box office smash.
Muck, for example, sup‑ plied its footwear and pop‑up shop free. ‘ We didn’t pay them and they didn’t pay us. We were just thrilled to be connected to Bridget,’ said a spokesman.
One can imagine that is not the case with some of the others.
It is all very different from the first film Bridget Jones’s Diary, released in 2001.
Yes, it is true that Bridget still wears her iconic Elsa Peretti open heart necklace from Tiffany and celebrity magazines are still strewn around her London flat (first time around it was Hello! — in the new film she favours OK!). But back then, there was none of the relentless product placement which embosses the latest film.
DURING one scene in the new movie she removes a Chateau de Sable babygrow from its mono‑ grammed packaging and stares at it as if she had just unwrapped the Eighth Won‑ der of the World.
And it goes without saying that she no longer writes her diary in a non‑specific red leather journal. She now taps it out on an Apple iPad — prominently seen in the poster campaign.
Perhaps this change in advertising circumstances is because in the old days, our ‘Bridg’ was a penniless under‑ ling in a publishing firm, a drone who wore generic skirts and shapeless coats.
Today, she is a thriving TV news producer, a successful 43‑year‑old singleton with more money to spend. But she is still loveable, dotty and mixed up, which makes mil‑ lions of women identify with her — and turns her into an advertiser’s dream.
Product placement is noth‑ ing new, of course. However, it is Bridget Jones who is leading the way on the big screen at the moment.
She no longer smokes or counts calories, which is per‑ haps a blessing — but as you can see here, everything else in her calamitous life has been carefully mapped out not by fate or the stars, but by v.v. clever advertising.