Product Placement: A Simple F(l)avor with Aviation Gin

I think the most interesting product placement I found recently was the use of Aviation Gin in the 2018 film, A Simple Favor.

A Simple Favor is a thriller mystery about a single-mother, Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) befriending a secretive upper-class mother by the name of Emily (Blake Lively), who ends up goes missing. With the help of her vlog, Stephanie decides to take action and find her missing friend.

In the movie, Emily’s go-to drink is a martini. Whenever she makes them for her and Stephanie, she presents the martini in a chilled glass, straight, with no ice and puts the finishing touch by adding a lemon rind twist in the glass.

What you may not have notice is the name of the gin she drinks, which is called Aviation Gin. What’s even crazier about that is this particular gin is owned by none other than her husband, Ryan Reynolds.

The actor discovered Aviation when he tried the gin in his hometown, Vancouver more than five years ago. A year later, according to Willamette Week, Reynolds decided to take ownership of the American gin. His plan with owing an American gin distillery, is to expand the brand name nationally and internationally.

What I really like about this product placement strategy was that it was personal to Blake and how the director of the film and according to Cosmopolitan, Paul Feig decided to choose this gin over anything else because of how the bottle looked on the screen.