- Becky Ebenkamp

Vespa is in the mood for a little bromance with onscreen brand integration in the Paramount comedy I Love You, Man. Vespa is also kicking off a contest on MySpace, and will award the scooter used in the movie to a BFF who can show he’ll go the distance for his buddy.

In the movie opening today (Friday), Paul Rudd plays Peter Klaven, who is engaged and needs to find a best friend to serve as best man at his wedding. He befriends offbeat Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), and wackiness ensues. The best buds pursue their adventures while riding around on a Vespa LXV 150 (complete with dorky headgear and, in Segel’s case, inexplicably, a pair of ladies’ Ugg boots).

The LXV 150 scooter is Fife’s primary mode of transportation in the film and it serves as an extension of his personality. Off-screen, Segel is a Vespa owner, too.

“We are continually trying to showcase Vespa scooters as not only fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly transportation, but as fun transportation, and the movie was an opportunity to portray the Vespa as a free-spirited, go-anywhere travel companion,” said Paolo Timoni, CEO and president of Piaggio Group Americas, Vespa’s U.S. importer. “Placement in the movie helped us extend key brand messages [and] . . . targets the 18-34 year demographic, where we see a lot of opportunity for the brand.”

MySpace was chosen as the contest vehicle since its young, social demographic jives with the film’s intended audience, per the company.

The “I Love You, Man: How Far Would You Go for Your Bro Comment Contest?” overlay allows those who have friended the film to vie for the Vespa in the "comments" section of the homepage. Sample entries include: “If we were flying a plane and crashed atop the snowy mountains and had no food . . . I would totally let him eat me first.” A movie poster of the main characters can also be downloaded from Vespa’s Web site.

An Italian brand traditionally known for its high performance and mod style that was more popular in the European market, Vespa is positioned as a fun, fuel-efficient mode of transportation. Last summer, the brand partnered with Subway for a Get Smart promotion and it’s currently running a program with fashion brand Lacoste that involves displays of Vespas at boutiques in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Miami and Philadelphia, and a sweepstakes for the new S 50 model. In a PR/marketing stunt to show how scooters save space, two summers ago Vespa bought eight spaces in Edison parking garages around Manhattan and festively turned them into 64 scooter spots.

Vespa has benefited greatly from the alternative transportation movement. Piaggio Group Americas saw sales of its scooters increase 61 percent in 2008 as Americans turned to the alt-vehicles to combat gas prices, traffic jams, parking shortages, pollution and a host of other issues the brand is happy to mention via its Vespanomics initiative.