Modern Family & Toyota Sienna: Product Placement Perfection
May 10, 2011 by Nate Winter
If you're not watching ABC’s Modern Family, you're missing some of the finest network comedy since Arrested Development. You're also missing a golden example of how to do product placement right.
On Modern Family, the Dunphy family's Toyota Sienna plays a regular, although low-key, part. Have a look at one of the show’s funniest episodes ever, The Musical Man from a couple weeks ago, which gives the Sienna a central role in the hilarity.
In the first seconds of the episode, we see an establishing shot of the Dunphy house, showing the Toyota Sienna in the driveway. The Toyota logo is visible, but not prominent.
In the first scene Phil refers to the Sienna as “our minivan.” Moments later, Haley says, “Only dad can make our minivan even lamer.” The writers could’ve easily plugged the product in these lines, but they didn’t. It obviously would’ve felt forced, distracted us from the show and undermined the humor.
Later in the episode, Phil is scrambling to distract Haley and his wife, Claire. He hurries Haley out the side door of the van, saying, “The doors slide, the seats slide. What can’t the Sienna do?”
A moment later he’s ushering Haley and Claire away from the van and demonstrates the vehicle’s ability to close the sliding side door using the remote. And it’s all done in a panicky, quirky, laughable way that fits Phil’s character to a tee.
So Toyota and the show’s writers deserve a lot of credit for weaving the Sienna into the storyline so smoothly and believably. But here’s what separates “the men from the boys,” so to speak, among advertisers.
This episode turns the Dunphy’s Sienna into a rolling billboard for family-run prostitution. It’s potentially controversial content that would’ve caused more than a few advertisers to pull out. So I give Toyota a lot of credit for staying the course and recognizing that this is one of Modern Family’s funniest episodes to date, and that the benefits of a starring role in this classic episode far outweigh any stuffy objections to the subject matter.
It’s branded entertainment at its finest. Toyota Sienna and Modern Family-- a product placement relationship that goes together like, well, minivans and families.
