If you watched last week’s Josh Brolin-hosted Saturday Night Live, you might have noticed prominent branding for Chase Bank in the show’s second sketch of the night, “Bank Robbery.”
The sketch opened with the exterior of a Chase Bank and the walls of the set were adorned with the Chase logo. That’s how it aired live, and that’s how it was presented online. That is, until late last week, when the Chase branding was digitally removed from the sketch online and replaced with branding for a generic bank named “Metro Capital.”
We don’t know exactly what prompted the show to remove the Chase branding in this case, although from the looks of things, its (non-essential from a comedy perspective) inclusion appears likely to have been the result of a product placement arrangement.
Branded content isn’t unusual these days on Saturday Night Live. In 2017, the show began integrating real-world brands into its comedy in ways big and small — recent examples include fake ads for Cologuard and Liberty Mutual. How involved an individual brand is depends on the circumstances. Some of the show’s fake ads are done with the consent and participation of advertisers, while others are not.
In one case from a few years back, the show spoofed a Safelite commercial apparently without the brand’s knowledge or consent. Safelite took to social media to complain and SNL removed the clip online and from future rebroadcasts.
In this case, whether Chase had an advance heads-up of their inclusion in the Bank Robbery sketch or not, it would appear they’ve decided that they’d rather not have their brand associated with bank robberies and/or sexually deviant bank customers.
Luckily for SNL, (the fictional) Metro Capital bank has no such qualms. Watch the before and after below:
Thank goodness for video captures, so we can compare!