Yellowstone is Brimming with Brands
After persistent cajoling from friends, my wife and I began watching Yellowstone. My hesitation came from reading a review that said smart people watch Succession while Yellowstone attracts a different type of viewer (yes, it was a snobby piece). After the first couple of episodes I was still not sold. A few years back, we tried watching the tv show, Nashville, that was basically a soap opera with singing and that memory was throwing me off.
Now, midway through season two, we are hooked. Perhaps because it is familiar. There is a lot of Succession and Game of Thrones themes going on and I love the sweeping vistas of such beautiful land. But this is not a review of the show, it is something new now impacting my enjoyment. The show is chock full of product placements!
As a veteran of Mad Ave and a corporate and product brander, I am sensitive to such activity but now I am not watching the show, I am anticipating “brand x” in the next scene. They are incredibly blatant and contrived as to be humorous. I have brokered product placements and am perplexed by the show’s execution.
This first that stood out was a YETI ice chest. In the scene, it was placed on the top of a fence and framed by two of the cowpokes. It was such a ridiculously staged tableau that I laughed out loud. It looked like an ad. There was nothing organic or authentic in the presentation. Apparently, YETI products appear again and again.
Where my unfortunate fixation took real root was with the clothing brand, Carhartt. This rough and tumble apparel appears to be worn by 90% of people living in Montana. On the show, they are used as uniform jackets on law enforcement and ranches co-brand on the clothing. Carhartt must have a whole department dedicated to product placements. According the website, productplacementblog, the stuff shows up with frequency in other shows including Maid, Doom Patrol, and The Mosquito Coast. When you take in these onscreen appearances, it becomes clear that the brand is super popular with all types of people, suburban and rural, prosperous and blue collar.
Other brands that are definitely paying to play on Yellowstone include Dodge, Coors and Wrangler. Given the show, those brands make absolute sense. Though I have learned, the beer of choice in Montana is Rainier according to Food and Wine. Other desktop research made me laugh. One Reddit writer called the show one giant ad for Dodge Ram. Another pointed out this about the trucks, “No dents or bumps, no sagging or missing bumpers, hell even the tires look all shiny, no dirt on them.”
Perhaps the smoothest brand appearance belongs to Bloomer Trailers. They are the towed, well appointed horse trailers. These RVs for the equine cost upwards of US$200,000. Once you know about these Bloomers, you will see them in every second scene of the show.
The worst placement so far comes in Episode 6 of season 2 called, Blood the Boy. Three generations of the Duttons go deer hunting. Granddad John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, delivers another sage, gravelly voiced lesson about killing to his son and grandson. John and his son, Casey, are wearing a camouflage hunting apparel brand called, Badlands. I had never heard of it but the brand was hilariously reinforced repeatedly in the five minutes it appears.
In the scene, the grandson takes down his first animal with one shot. The three walk up to the kill (that shot reveals Casey is wearing Carhartt pants). Costner unzips his Badlands jacket and removes it to reveal a lighter Badlands jacket. That got me chuckling but wait. He then unzips the light jacket to showcase a Badlands long sleeve camouflage shirt. It is a promotional display of epic comic proportions. Instead of laughing at the third reveal, I was dumbfounded by how obvious and silly it came across.
The website, The Ringer, calls Yellowstone, “frontier jacket porn”. In the article, A Tribute to Kevin Costner’s Many ‘Yellowstone’ Jackets, they profile every jacket John Dutton has sported. On Amazon, you can buy his tan coat with orange shoulder patches for less than a hundred bucks. Or you can buy the dark cowboy’s (Rip Wheeler) jacket for a bit more.
I have to say the best brand on the show is fictional. It is the Dutton Ranch’s logo. That stylized “Y” actually seared onto cattle hide would really stand out. It is a cool mark as we say in the biz. The very essence of historic and authentic branding…and it looks good on a fleece vest. I hope I can turn off my product placement lens when watching Yellowstone. It will be difficult. If I ate a cookie every time there is an obvious brand appearance in the show, I would be a plump bovine.
