Amazon Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty’s final season is well underway, and brands are eager to reach the show’s fans.
The third season of the show debuted on July 16 with two episodes, receiving 25 million viewers globally in the first week, according to Amazon. That’s a 40% increase in viewership compared to the second season’s performance in the same time period. Additionally, the show’s viewership tripled from Season 1 to Season 3 in the first seven days.
As the show’s popularity has grown as the series comes to an end, Amazon snagged deals with brands including Catbird jewelry, apparel brand Solid & Striped, and Sour Patch Kids that go beyond product placement.
ADWEEK rounded up the brands featured in the third season of The Summer I Turned Pretty.
Catbird
Jewelry brand Catbird scored an integration into one of the most talked about moments of the show: Jeremiah’s proposal to Belly in the second episode. Jeremiah proposes with Catbird’s dainty Diamond Fizz Ring, which generated lots of online chatter about its slight size.
Leigh Plessner, Catbird’s chief creative officer, told ADWEEK that the brand knew that the ring was going to be used in the show, but seeing how it was used and received by audiences was a fun moment. Within a month of the episode airing, Catbird saw a 1,900% increase in pageviews for the ring on the brand’s ecommerce site, according to Catbird.
Belly also wears Catbird’s 100 Summers Gold Chain with a daisy charm in the show.
The partnership between Catbird and The Summer I Turned Pretty came about after Opening Ceremony cofounder and the show’s stylist Carol Lim DMed Plessner’s personal Instagram account. They then created a seven-piece jewelry collection that’s available on Catbird’s website. It includes a gold bracelet that reads Belly as well as a shell charm.
Catbird has collaborated with Phoebe Bridgers, Laufey, Jenny Slate, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the past. The goal is for partnerships to come from a place of real connection to the collaborative project, said Plessner. For The Summer I Turned Pretty, Plessner felt that jewelry was a big part of the show’s story and of Belly’s style evolution.
“Something that’s really special about the show is that even though the main characters are of a certain age, the fan base is across generation and gender,” said Plessner. “While the theory of reaching young people is true, there’s so much more to it.”
Sour Patch Kids
Still, the show heavily skews towards Gen Z and teens—a core demographic that Sour Patch Kids uses to vet its partnerships, said John Vasington, senior brand manager of candy at Mondelez International.
“To have a show that’s so popular amongst that audience—and so naturally integrates our brands in a way that feels really resonant—had us very excited to make things official and become official partners for season three,” said Vasington.