Visibility Equals Sales

There was a lot of interesting stuff in the movie "Office Space". The most interesting, perhaps, was the origin of that red Swingline stapler that we see in the film.

That stapler didn't actually exist at the time. In fact, director Mike Judge asked a Boston Stapler company if he could use one of their staplers in the movie, and when they said no, Mike went to Swingline staplers instead and asked if he could use one of theirs. There was one catch: Mike wanted a bright-colored stapler that could better be seen on film, but Swingline didn't have a red stapler. So Mike took the Swingline staplers to an autobody shop and had them painted bright red.

A couple of years after the film was released and became a huge cult hit, viewers actually began seeking that stapler out. Swingline, however, still didn't have a red stapler as part of their product line, so a market for replicas grew on Ebay. Seeing that such a huge market for the stapler existed, Swingline decided to produce one themselves.

It would become the company's biggest selling stapler and, as the Wall Street Journal wrote in 2002, completely transformed the image of the company.

All because of some product placement - for a product that didn't even exist.

In fact, if you go to the Swingline website today, that stapler is still their most prominently featured product, and it's still their biggest-selling product.