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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
John Still

Great Scott! How brands raced in to claim Future Day

Back to the Future's Doc Brown and Marty McFly visit Hill Valley in 2015
Doc Brown and Marty McFly visit Hill Valley in 2015. Photograph: Moviestore/REX Shutterstock

It probably didn’t escape your attention that yesterday was Back to the Future day, the day that time-travellers Marty McFly and Doc Brown visited in the sequel to Robert Zemeckis’s 1985 classic. The film’s view of 2015 was littered with pop-culture predictions and visions of futuristic tech and to celebrate the day, some of the brands featured in the film (and many that weren’t) have tried to take full advantage of the #FutureDay buzz.

USA Today

In the film Doc Brown holds up a copy of USA Today, the front page of which features Marty McFly. To mark the day, today’s copy of the paper came complete with a mock-up of the film’s fake cover story.

Burger King

Burger King France’s HoverTray ad.

Jumping on the hover-tech bandwagon was Burger King France, which released this ad for the HoverTray, featuring a nod to the Doc’s famous DeLorean car, heard jetting off after picking up a takeaway at the drive through.

Oreo

Oreo, an old hand at reactive marketing, wasn’t slow off the mark in jumping on the #BackToTheFuture hashtag with its own version of Marty’s iconic hoverboard: the Oreo Board. Quite a stretch in terms of brand extension.

  • Oreo’s tweet seems to have since been removed from Twitter

Pepsi Perfect

Pepsi’s The Future is Now ad.

The Hill Valley vision of 2015 was awash with Pepsi Perfect, a nutritionally enhanced version of the beverage. To celebrate, Pepsi has released a limited run of 6,500 Pepsi Perfect bottles, albeit without the extra ingredients.

KLM

Dutch airline KLM got in on the act with a Twitter ad quoting Doc Brown’s famous final line from the first Back to the Future. The picture also features the sports results almanac that enabled antagonist Biff Tannen to become wealthy and powerful in the Hill Valley of 2015.

Nike Air Mag

One of the most sought-after of all the inventions Marty McFly encountered were the self-tying trainers, the Nike Air Mag. The sports apparel brand stoked the social media fires by tweeting at Michael J Fox on the eve of Future Day and the following day a picture was tweeted by the actor, confirming that he had received a pair. Nike confirmed that more pairs of the Air Mag will be available in 2016, with profits going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s disease research.

  • Any other favourite brand tie-ins from Future Day? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter via @GuardianMTN

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