A few years ago, competition between TV channels was fierce.
They did everything possible to avoid losing their audience.
For example, they were able to camouflage an advertisement in a movie as if it were part of the plot so as not to make commercial breaks.
If not, look at what happened with Star Wars and
Cristal
beer .
In the last few hours, three clippings belonging to Star Wars broadcasts on Chilean television where these camouflaged advertisements appear have gone viral on networks.
The videos caused fascination among the foreign audience, so much so that the news reached Stephen Colbert's Late Show on American television.
The Cerveza Cristal meme came to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert pic.twitter.com/PYrX9gSGlZ
— Edo 吴 (@edowoo) March 6, 2024
What is behind all this?
The broadcasts with the beer advertisements were between December 2003 and February 2004, on Channel 13. The idea was for the brand to appear in the film as if it were part of history.
A
product placement
titled “
The Force is with Cerveza Cristal
” that today seems impossible to replicate.
Felipe Wielandt
, Cristal's former head of marketing at the time, said that in those times “there was the challenge of fighting zapping so that consumers could be exposed to the brand in a medium as massive as TV.”
“
It was crazy
,” he stated.
Wielandt detailed in a conversation with The Clinic that Channel 13 had to insert the commercials “
in a creative, subtle way that avoided zapping, surprising our consumers
.”
Another appearance of Cristal beer in Star Wars.
The idea came from the agencies.
The agreement said that Channel 13 had to insert three interventions by Cristal in the films.
Wielandt reviewed “the proposals to intervene in the current film that Channel 13 presented to us, where an imperceptible black box separated the film from the commercial intervention.”
“
The idea was to match the original scene as much as possible,
taking care not to ever intervene in the film.
We couldn't use the actors, there wasn't even dialogue imitating the originals.
There were three to five seconds in which our product suddenly appeared as if it were on stage,” Felipe explained.
And he continued: “The creativity and genius of surprising the viewer not only with very well-made pieces, but with the idea from the use of media and profitable investment, which was brilliant, stood out.”
At that time also the commotion was such that the decision even reached the ears of
George Lucas
, the creator of the saga.
😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 3, 2024
“Even he (Lucas) talked about us 20 years ago.
Today thousands of people around the world took it up,
including Elon Musk
.
It is a source of pride for any Chilean that the advertising of a Chilean brand gives so much to talk about,” concluded the creative.