![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.denverpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/TDP-Z-productplacement-01.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIn the season four premiere of \u201cTom Clancy\u2019s Jack Ryan,\u201d CIA deputy director Jack Ryan (John Krasinski) attends a senate committee hearing to discuss the assassination of a foreign president. The senators ask him to raise his right and pledge to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.<\/p>\n
On his left hand, Ryan is wearing a large and shiny watch, distinct for showing 24 hours in its face instead of the usual 12.<\/p>\n
The watch, made by Fort Collins-based Vortic Watch Company, created a buzz among gearheads who scoured the internet in search of details about the accessory. According to R.T. Custer, co-founder and CEO, the company\u2019s website traffic jumped 50% compared to a typical month thanks to the cameo. It got another bump after a placement on \u201cThe Price Is Right,\u201d where a Vortic watch was one of the prizes on the wheel.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vortic, which restores old pocket watches and refurbishes them into wristwatches, only makes 50 of the military edition design per year. They sell for $8,000 each. By the time Gear Patrol ran a story entitled “What Watch Does John Krasinski Wear in the Final Season of ‘Jack Ryan?’” there were only five left, Custer said. The remaining stock sold out within 24 hours of the story’s publication in August.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe made tens of thousands of dollars off that,\u201d Custer said.<\/p>\n
Vortic Watch Company worked with Mark McFann, a Fort Collins resident and owner of Cast a Long Shadow marketing agency, to get its product on the wrist of one of TV\u2019s most notable CIA operatives and on a primetime game show. They\u2019re not the first. In 2022, McFann helped place a bottle of NOCO Distillery\u2019s whiskey in an episode of \u201cStar Trek: Picard,\u201d causing hardcore Trekkies to bombard the spirits maker in hopes of buying a bottle of their own.<\/p>\n
Among the myriad of marketing strategies, McFann said product placement can be among the most effective.<\/p>\n
\u201cFilmmakers really want TV and films to look real, so they prefer to use real products,” he said. Instead of buying or renting, producers oftentimes work with agencies to trade client exposure for free props.<\/p>\n
McFann has earned local brands visibility in blockbuster productions, like Marvel\u2019s \u201cDoctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.\u201d During one scene, an advertisement for Boulder tea company Celestial Seasonings appears posted to the side of a phone booth as a monster tears through downtown.<\/p>\n
The brands McFann reps and productions where he places them need to be a good fit. For example, he wouldn\u2019t place an expensive Vortic watch on the wrist of a character who couldn\u2019t afford it.<\/p>\n