Ahead of Thursday’s Emily in Paris premiere, fans got a taste of what’s to come in season five via a slew of creator content on their Instagram feeds. A group of influencers, armed with Emily in Paris-branded silver suitcases, hopped aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express to journey from Venice to Paris for the Monday evening premiere.
That evening, they were privy to the first two episodes of the show’s latest season. On-screen, a string of product placements helped construct the narrative over the first two episodes, with more to come. In episode two and beyond, there’s an entire plot line built around Fendi. Today, the brand is releasing a capsule collection of three handbags to celebrate Fendi’s presence across the season. Beyond this, Dolce Gabbana features when an Agence Grateau employee visits a D&G store, Rimowa suitcases are peppered across the episodes, and Peroni beer, too, gets a placement. (When in Rome!)
Product placements are becoming an increasingly significant part of marketing as producers are forced to get savvy with their shrinking film budgets, while, at the same time, luxury brands have upped their investments in film and television. In response to the uptick in product placement interest from the entertainment industry, talent agencies like United Talent Agency (UTA) are investing in departments to help guide brands in brokering these deals. “We’re seeing increased interest from brands as product placement effectively complements a broader entertainment marketing strategy,” says VP Jillian Raskin. Brands can get themselves on-screen in one of two ways: via paid product placements, which guarantees a feature, and ‘organic’ placements, in which a brand supplies products for free.
Getting them right requires doing so under heightened scrutiny, with many more people taking on the role of critic, eager to point out the behind-the-scenes machinations of fashion and film. Emily in Paris viewers lamented the string of product placements throughout the show in season four, from Boucheron, Vestiaire Collective and Augustinus Bader, to less fashion-specific entities including avatar app Zepeto and United Airlines. The latest season of Netflix’s Nobody Wants This drew similar critique, as viewers zeroed in on the frequent zoom-ins on Estée Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair product.
In November, fashion insiders were surprised to see Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly walking through the hallways of fictitious Runway magazine, the camera closely following her bright red Rockstud heels in The Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer. Creative director Alessandro Michele was surprised, too, he told Vogue Runway last week when discussing his pre-fall 2026 collection. “I’d been working on a new Rockstud for quite some time, and then this trailer drops, with her wearing those shoes. I jumped out of my chair,” Michele said.
Online, viewers were quick to question the strategy of picking a non-current pair of shoes, in a style they viewed as “past its heyday”. In reality, it wasn’t a paid placement, says the film’s costume designer Molly Rogers. “The real story is there were many red shoes there the day the teaser was shot. [The] director and marketing had their pick,” Rogers says, adding that she believes the shoes were from The RealReal.
Plenty of brands do send products in, in hopes they’ll get an on-screen moment of their own. “I have been fortunate to have strong personal relationships with houses because of the fashion projects I have worked on and am sent many items [brands] hope will end up in the film,” Rogers says. She adds that the brands understand they’re dressing a character for a film, not a commercial. “The fun part is, if it’s in the fitting room, it is usually reached for and [there are] happy endings for all.”
More orchestrated moments can also work, but only when executed with care. “Product placements work well when the brand values organically align with the moment or character. Nothing should feel forced, the brand should be a natural extension of the storytelling or represent an aspect of the character arch,” says Eileen Eastburn, CEO of brand creative agency Chandelier Creative. “On the other hand, the brand is sometimes in on the joke, which works when humor or wit are a part of their DNA.”
For some, product placements are part of the pull to watch. One Emily in Paris premiere attendee in Paris told Vogue Business’s Laure Guilbault that they want to watch the series, in part, because they’re curious about the brands involved. This person works in fashion, but in 2025, this curiosity is no longer limited to those who work in the industry — just look at TikTok, where viewers dissect product placements and features as soon as a buzzy series drops. UTA’s recent research supports this, Raskin says, finding that viewers enjoy seeing their favorite brands appear in the shows and films they watch. This heightened awareness means that brands — and studios — need to get placements right. So what’s the strategy?
Anti-ads
For years, brands incorporating products have been central to the creation of films. Only in the past, consumers were less attuned to the advertising mechanisms going on behind the scenes, as they were less fatigued by the constant marketing they’re subject to via media, social or otherwise.
To work in the current media environment, more than ever, product placements need to blend into and support the stories in which they’re included. It needs to feel like world-building, not a cameo, says Nikita Walia, strategy director at brand and venture studio Unnamed. “The best placements make sense for who the character is: they help you understand them, not remind you there was a marketing budget,” she says.
Emily in Paris seems to have got it right with its Fendi storyline. Here, there’s a narrative built around the brand. Main character Emily Cooper pitches the launch of city-specific Fendi Baguettes, with a “fake-but-real” bag for Los Angeles. “It’s very meta and self-referential. That’s where fashion is headed,” she tells her boss, Sylvie. The Fendi executives like the idea. That Emily is in Fendi’s home city of Rome this season makes it all the more fitting.
The play on dupe culture is tongue in cheek, and thus doesn’t feel overly produced. Product placements are, after all, at their best when they don’t take themselves too seriously, says Louis Pisano, author of the “Discoursted” Substack, like the Chanel makeup machine in The Fifth Element, or tap into emotion, like the heartfelt moment in Forrest Gump when the titular character receives a pair of Nikes. “The emotion needs to be on what’s happening in the scene — and then, ‘Oh look, it’s a brand!’, not ‘Oh…it’s a brand,’” he says.
This is where the Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair placement in Nobody Wants This back in October was a miss. In one scene, Kristen Bell’s Joanne places her phone (with Justine Lupe’s Morgan on FaceTime) right next to a Night Repair bottle, background blurred. That the Estée Lauder serum looked like an ad pulled the viewer out of the scene. “When it feels forced, with the logo perfectly turned to the front and specific shots dedicated to the product, consumers are distracted and the pay-for-play nature is too overt,” Eastburn says.
That viewers get annoyed by over-the-top placements doesn’t mean the products don’t generate interest as a result of their inclusion. In the two weeks following the show’s premiere, organic searches for Estée Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair rose 40% versus the prior period, according to the brand, which says that this reflects how on-screen integration can translate into consumer interest.
The same goes for Emily in Paris: viewers expressed frustration about the placement overload in past seasons, but brands included reported increased interest and sales. Vestiaire Collective gained over 22,000 followers shortly after the episode it was featured in premiered (the most of any brands featured in the show at the time), according to Metricool. “Not only did the show inspire people to sell like [Ashley Park’s character] Mindy, it also triggered purchases on the platform,” Vestiaire CEO Fanny Moizant told Vogue Business at the time.
But just because products can still sell when a placement isn’t seamless doesn’t mean brands shouldn’t endeavor to make it so. In the era of the endless scroll, people watch film and television to escape the feeling of being ‘sold to’ that permeates so much of short-form content. The integration of branded products must avoid this sense. “Product placement only really works when it reflects something true about the character or the moment,” Walia says. “When it does, it becomes part of culture. When it doesn’t, it just feels like advertising pretending to be storytelling.”
This season, Emily in Paris took things one step further, bringing the brands that feature in on-screen storylines into its off-screen promotional world. Ahead of Thursday’s premiere, while promoting the show on Jimmy Fallon, Lily Collins stepped out in a slip dress from Fendi’s fall 1997 collection — with a bright red Fendi Baguette in tow. Later, Collins swapped out the look for a second Fendi outfit from its resort 2026 collection. Sure, at the time, onlookers didn’t know these outfits would take on new significance once the brand’s role in the show became apparent. Both Fendi and Netflix knew all too well.
Looking ahead to 2026, we’ll be on the lookout for which products feature when shows such as Stranger Things, Bridgerton and Industry return to our screens later this month and in January. Or rather, we’ll be hoping not to clock them at all.
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