‘Everybody gets it’: Inside the brand partnerships powering ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’

“Where are the advertisers?”

It’s a question Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada, asks of her staff in a scene so famous it’s been talked about for nearly two decades. You know the one—the cerulean sweater scene, in which Priestly deftly schools Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs on why her “lumpy” blue sweater was actually chosen for her by the people in the room, spelling out the far reach of the fashion elite.

The continued cultural cache of the original film is so powerful that for the sequel, due out May 1, advertiser presence was never a question. If you’ve been paying attention—or even if you haven’t—co-branded marketing for The Devil Wears Prada 2 and a long list of brands has been largely inescapable. TRESemmé, L’Oréal, Zillow, Samsung, Old Navy, smartwater, Diet Coke, Starbucks, Tweezerman, Google, and Walmart are among the brands on that list.

When it comes to the sequel, which is reportedly projected to bring in $66 million at its box office opening, brands were more than eager to get involved, David Anderson, partner and co-head of the entertainment and marketing group for UTA, told us.

“We have had many, many, many, many, many clients be like, ‘What’s going on with this?’” he said, adding that marketers have been “constantly interested in it.”

And why not? For one thing, marketers don’t have to make a big case to the rest of the C-suite to get it done, Anderson said. “‘I don’t have to explain this to anybody. I don’t have to explain why we’re doing this. Everybody gets it,’” he said.

Everybody wants this

That sentiment seems to be widely shared across the industry given the number of brand partnerships and co-marketing efforts for the film. After brand-movie bonanzas like Barbie and Wicked, the playbook has been written, and the movie itself makes for plenty of natural brand extension opportunities.

“The Devil Wears Prada is one of those rare films where the cultural relevance didn’t fade—it just stuck,” said Luke Perkins, group director, creative strategy at The Coca-Cola Company, which worked with 20th Century Studios to promote smartwater. “There are iconic moments, lines, and references that people still recognize instantly, which gives brands a shared language to tap into.”

The iconic moment in question is that cerulean monologue: Smartwater has released special-edition cerulean bottles in select Target stores, as well as an interactive game that challenges players to identify cerulean in a “sea of blues” for a chance to win tickets to the film. Beyond that, the brand is also integrated into the actual movie.

But getting involved with the sequel was not exactly easy for brands, according to some marketers and agency execs, who told us that the power of the original and the expectations around the sequel meant there were plenty of calls coming in early.

“Disney knew they had something special,” said Anderson, whose company works with Coca-Cola. “Usually, if I reach out to a studio and say, ‘Hey, our clients are really interested,’ it’s very well received…This dynamic was more like, ‘Well, you know it’s going to be competitive, right?’”

That was particularly true for brands in beauty and fashion, which have an obvious connection to the film. Anderson said that the understanding was brands in those categories would have to come with a “big offer” to score the deal.

Dora Fenyvesi, VP of client management at UEG, can attest. “It was extremely competitive for brands to get involved,” she said in an email.

UEG anticipated that the hair-care category could be difficult to land, bringing the opportunity to its client, TRESemmé, all the way back in the fall of 2024—while also sharing the brand’s interest with the studio, Fenyvesi told us.

Doing so “locked in the hair-care category for TRESemmé globally,” she said; as part of its partnership, TRESemmé released three special-edition products inspired by the film, a new campaign featuring designer Christian Siriano and influencer Paige DeSorbo, and experiential activations at the film premieres and New York and Mexico Fashion Week.

That’s all

Throughout the spring, co-branded marketing campaigns from the myriad brands involved have come out, some featuring characters from the film in spots, while others take place in the offices of Runway, the fictional fashion magazine central to the film.

The challenge for brands is the possibility that audiences feel “overloaded with so many brands,” Daryl Giannantonio, chief strategy officer for VML, told us. That comes with risk, she added; beyond the chance that a brand gets lost in the deluge, audience fatigue could lead to questions of authenticity.

That’s why Giannantonio believes smart marketers should think about how exactly they’re involved in this film—and films in general—and how it fits with the brand story, rather than committing the ever-derided sin of a logo-slap.

For that reason, she suggested that real in-movie integration could be an attractive option.

That’s exactly the approach Zillow took, according to Beverly Jackson, VP of brand and product marketing at the company. “We can’t talk about the movie yet and the role that Zillow plays in it, because the movie is still not out, but this isn’t just our logo slapped on something,” she told us. “Zillow Rentals is woven into the fabric of the story.”

In general, when a brand makes a considerable co-marketing commitment to promote a movie and a partnership, there isn’t an additional fee for integrating the brand into the movie, an arrangement that UTA has typically pursued for clients, Anderson said. When a brand is a big media spender, committing to something like $10 million on media isn’t a big deal, but for others, that can be a massive outlay, he added.

The buzz around the release of the sequel is important for the brands marketing around it ahead of the release, but for some brands, the potential staying power of the sequel and its continued cultural relevance is what makes marketers so interested—and, in many cases, willing to shell out the cash needed to get involved.

“Movies don’t just reach audiences; they recruit them into a story,” Joe Ames, EVP, head of entertainment at UEG, shared in an email. “When a brand becomes part of that story, it borrows the film’s emotion, identity, and cultural staying power in a way traditional ads can’t match.”