And Just Like That...Apple Is the Biggest Product Placement Star on TV

Which phones and laptops are seen the most in TV and movies? Apple tops the list on Tim Cook-approved productions, but Sony and Dell have also had some time in the spotlight.

Picture it: You’re the Peloton PR person who set up your product’s appearance on the premiere of the most highly anticipated show of the year, the revival of Sex and the City. You type up some anticipatory emails, grab a cosmo, and turn on your TV. But there’s a big problem: After the sweat session that you personally arranged, John James Preston (aka Big) gets off the bike and has a fatal heart attack.

And just like that... your product has killed the love of the main character’s life. 

Maybe this is what inspired Merchant Machine to put together a look at brand placement in shows and movies. The site went to Product Placement Blog, which catalogs and categorizes where brands appear in shows and movies, and assessed which brands and products have the most placements on our screens.

Tech brands dominate the list, and Apple is at the top with 1,884 placements. It’s followed by Sony with 870, Dell with 679, Samsung with 373, Microsoft with 231, Panasonic with 222, Motorola with 177, Google with 163, Nikon with 145, LG with 142, HP with 140, AT&T with 130, and Canon with 123.

The most-seen product in shows and movies is the Apple MacBook, which has had far more luck than Peloton with And Just Like That... and Sex and the City. Even when Carrie Bradshaw’s Apple PowerBook G3 crashes irreparably, losing all of her columns, in the 2003 episode “My Motherboard, My Self,” she makes the move to a blueberry Apple iBook G3. In And Just Like That... she loses yet another MacBook in a Zoom-related accident but is soon seen at the Upper East Side Apple Store buying a new one. It was the first time Apple allowed any show to film inside one of its stores, a decision that Tim Cook himself had to approve. 

That the approval had to come from so high up should not be a surprise to anyone who has tried to eliminate suspects in shows or movies by who has an Apple product and who doesn’t. The company refuses to allow any villains to so much as text on an iPhone.