A multimodal discourse analytic approach to the articulation of Martini’s “desire” positioning in filmic product placement

Abstract

ABSTRACTProduct placement constitutes an amply used tactic in a marketer’s Integrated Marketing Communications roster. Its merits in circumventing negative attitudes to advertising and in integrating brand values in sociocultural narratives in TV and cinematic filmic discourses have been repeatedly stressed. However, little attention has been placed thus far in the idiosyncratic mode that is scrutinized in this paper, that is product placement by leveraging uncertainty, surprise, postponement and displacement as defining characteristics of the discourse of desire. The analysis of the discourse of desire that unravels in a flirting sequence from the blockbuster movie “Hitch” demonstrates that although the concerned brand (Martini) is minimally visible in the analyzed scene, yet it attains to appropriate as part of its core DNA in “stealth” mode the above characteristics of desire by demarcating the cultural field of flirtation. The offered cultural analytic addresses this idiosyncratic product placement mode by drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis and multimodal discourse analysis.