The perils of product placement
Fitness firm Peloton boomed in lockdown, but all of a sudden its fortunes are going off track
Having your product be responsible for the demise of a popular fictional character is a rather unfortunate mishap, as glorified exercise bike manufacturer Peloton has just found out. The opening episode of And Just Like
That… , the high-profile reboot of Sex and the City saw Mr Big – the husband of the series’ main character, Carrie Bradshaw – suffer a fatal heart attack after a vigorous ride on his Peloton. “It came as no massive surprise to followers of the show” says Valentine Low in The Times: a death had been rumoured for some time. But markets were a different matter, with over a billion dollars wiped off Peloton shares.
So the company rushed into “damage limitation mode”, says Low. Firstly, it emphasised that it “had no idea how prominently [the bike] would feature”. It then turned its fire on the dead man, with Suzanne Steinbaum, a cardiologist and advisor to Peloton, issuing a statement blaming his “lifestyle choices”, rather than his choice of exercise machine. The man “lived what many would call an extravagant lifestyle – including cocktails, cigars, and big steaks”, she said. Indeed, his bike “may have even helped delay his cardiac event”.
A double-edged sword
The episode highlights the double-edged nature of product placement, says Isabella Grullón Paz in The New York Times. As streaming reduces the number of advertisements that consumers watch, brands are trying “to make greater use of product-placement deals to promote themselves”, with the industry now “worth well over $20bn”. However, in this case, HBO, who produced the series, forgot that “product placement is supposed to be mutually beneficial”. Experts said that Peloton “could reasonably consider litigation, especially if HBO did not disclose the story line involving the product”.
Rather than reaching for a lawyer, Peloton tried to respond in kind by having the unfortunate Mr Big “come back to life”, says Omar Abdel-Baqui in The Wall Street Journal. In a new advert, created in less than 48 hours after the episode aired, Mr Big (played by Chris Noth) “is seen cozying up next to a fireplace with Allegra, a fictional Peloton instructor in the show played by a real one, Jess King”, in an ad that reinforced “how cardiovascular exercise can help people lead long, healthy lives”. But just one day later, the firm pulled the ad after two women made allegations of sexual assault against Noth, who denies any wrongdoing.
Lockdown regrets
Peloton may have been unlucky this time, but it’s hard to escape the sense that “progress has stalled”, says Kate Wills in the Evening Standard. “A £1,750 exercise bike complete with swishy-haired American instructors at the touch of a button” seemed like a good idea when gyms were closed, but many of us have “come to regret our lockdown purchases”. Fans say “it’s more than an exercise bike”, but “Facebook Marketplace suggests another story”. There you can now find “hundreds of secondhand Pelotons for sale”, with captions such as “Excellent condition! Barely used!”.
“A £1,750 exercise bike seemed a good idea when gyms were closed but many of us have come to regret it”