Product Placement: Mean Girls 2024
The new Mean Girls has been out in cinemas in the US for five days and is up in flames on TikTok already… why?
Other than the confusion of it being an adaptation of the Broadway musical, people are speaking out about the ‘cheap mirco trends’ in costuming and painfully obvious product placement.
Labelled as a ‘fast-fashion remake’ and a 'two-hour commercial’, there’s a lesson in the importance of costume design and prioritising homage over product promotion in film marketing 🎞
A major part of the Mean Girls storyline is fashion influence, with the leading example being the cut-outs in Regina’s top, starting a mass trend. The backstabbing about a second-hand skirt and the Halloween party. Regina George was rich.
Considering the early 2000s (aka y2k) are trending in the Gen Z marketplace right now, and thrifting vintage designers is actually cool, why not use that to the advantage here?
With that in mind, I don’t claim to be a fashion expert, but here are the product placement and fashion moments that we might have hoped for:
💄 Christian Dior Couture beauty and vintage runway, but especially the famous lip oil (hashtag#diorlipoil 1.1B views on TikTok). This is an example of taking a classic brand that was still hot at the time of the original and elevating a trending product of the current time. If they wanted further modern beauty trends I would’ve gone for Charlotte Tilbury Beauty (5.3B views), rhode skin (945M views) and REFY (203M views).
👕 Blumarine was a missed opportunity here, nailing the y2k renaissance with a modern point of difference. They dressed Maddy in Euphoria, and with that popularity (hashtag#maddyeuphoria 1.3B views) and similar characteristics, I would’ve thought this was an excellent choice.
🕶 The perfect choices for Janis would’ve been UNIF and The Ragged Priest knitwear to exaggerate the style differences and colour palettes between Regina and Janis, honouring her grungy sense of style entirely.
As for the debate on whether it was clear it was a musical… I’m inclined to say it was in every teaser trailer I’ve seen; however, it does call for us to understand the importance of making a clear statement at some point in any campaign.