Vespa: Is a Product Placement Icon is Failing its Reputation?
Over the last couple years, legendary scooter-maker Vespa has been on a product placement tear. Picking up roles in films like The Interpreter, Tansformers, Alfie and Fool’s Gold a few years ago, the scooter has opened the accelerator and starred recently in Get Smart, Penelope, I Love You, Man, Duplicity, Benjamin Button and Angels & Demons. It’s too bad then, like so many brands before it seeking a boost from Hollywood, Vespa is largely blowing it.
Vespa got its start just after WWII, with Italian company Piaggio & C. SpA releasing the Vespa model. Legendarily, Enrico Piaggio heard the buzzing sound of the engine he exclaimed: “Sembra una vespa!” (”It resembles a wasp!”)
And Vespa has one of the greatest product placement pedigrees of any brand. In 1953 Audrey Hepburn puttered around in Old Europe with Gregory Peck’ atop a Vespa in the classic Roman Holiday. The much-repeated stat is that the placement resulted in an immediate 100,000 sales. But even more importantly it cemented Vespa as an onscreen star.
The scooter fell out of favor in America for many decades thanks to cheap oil and restrictive emission standards in the U.S. But fuel efficiency is making a comeback and so is the option of the scooter. Vespa is an icon and in perfect position to take advantage of its reputation both on- and off-screen.
When it comes to product placement, Vespa has two real problems. The first is tragic and sadly typical of a brand as iconic in Hollywood as Vespa. The second is simply a design flaw.
As I have mentioned numerous times with brand such as Harley-Davidson, Triumph, Jeep, Ray-Ban, Vespa is missing a huge opportunity by not having a page of its site desiccated to its iconic film roles. Especially the Roman Holiday or Alfie (the original) showings. When it comes to showcasing its schowcasings, the Vespa site (currently) just highlights an Angels & Demons promotional giveaway poster that captures all the sex appeal of a press release, which it essentially is. It also features zero images of the Vespa in the film. This is no surprise as Vespa’s promo poster for its role in Get Smart also featured the same B-rate photoshop job. (If you took out “Vespa” and replaced it with “Jeep” in the above analysis, you would essentially have Jeep’s current promotion for Terminator Salvation.)
The second unfortunate detail of Vespa’s product placement campaigning is the scooter itself. The new line of Vespas look nothing like the iconic bike Hepburn and Tracey rode. The new models look more like descendants of Honda Sprees than of the Piaggio classic. So when the scooters show up under the rump of, say, Anne Hathaway in Get Smart, Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man, Reese Witherspoon in Penelope, or Megan Fox in Transformers, nobody makes the connection to the classic. Compare these humdrum roles to the recent scene-stealers of the fatter, less-sleek, classic Vespa model: The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Interpreter, Alfie (remake), and Benjamin Button.
Maybe there is no better example of the disconnect between classic and modern than that of the Alfie remake.
The Jude Law remake of Michael Caine classic cad stuck to the original by including a Vespa. A great opportunity for Vespa, for sure. The film is updated to New York with the new Alfie, wardrobe and all, updated as well. Except, the updated Alfie rides a classic model Vespa. And yet Vespa’s tie-in materials promoted a Vespa that…yeah, kinda, sorta, looked like Alfie’s. Unfortunately, this is the equivalent of showing Bullitt’s Mustang GT 390 Fastback and then promoting it as a tie-in with the “modern” Ford Probe, making sure customers love it because, you know, it has a similar paint job.
The funny thing is that it appears Vespa did, for a while recently, offer a model 125PX that was a close reproduction of the original. But the Vespa site has no record of the 125PX being available anymore. Again demonstrating how Vesp’s latest onscreen appearances lack their previous luster is a aide-by-side comparison of Vespa’s recent role in I Love You, Man verses Honda’s role in Yes Man. The scooters are indistinguishable to most consumers, and that’s bad for Vespa.
An additional benefit of reproducing the old model is to reward the Vespa brand champions who religiously slave over rebuilding the originals.
The lesson of having done the design right the first time is something Ford and Chevrolet have recently learned, capitalizing on nostalgia by releasing modern models of cars like the Mustang and the Camero that closely resemble those of the brand’s glory days. It appears McQueen’s Bullitt Mustang has more staying power. (It’s noteworthy that this is a lesson the Porsche 911 kind of never forgot). One can also look to VW’s Bug and the Mini Cooper as designs that, while originally designed on the cheap for the cheaper, came back as strong as ever when reintroduced with largely only internal upgrades. It’s a lesson Nike learned with its Dunks. Even Volvo is now considering the option.