Amazing product placement

Watched the Amazing Race tonight and was amazed by the degree of product pimping, I mean placement.

There was one recent episode where the winners of a leg got to be the first to try a new kind of Snapple – and far too much air time was devoted to them holding their Snapple bottles, sipping their Snapple ice tea. Tonight’s episode showcased Ford – and the winners each got their own car.

Sure, I know that advertisers need to find new ways to reach audiences. And V and I are exactly the sort of audience they are targeting, since we record the show in order to be able to fast forward through the commercials. I so rarely watch commercials these days that when I do, I’m fascinated with them as if I were discovering some old relic of the past.

I’ve also started paying attention in shows to how many products are actually displayed. I notice if the beer label is turned to the camera, or turned away. I notice what products are being displayed on counter tops. But while it’s one thing to have a brand of crackers on top of the fridge (Mad Men) it’s quite another to be as blatant as the Amazing Race is. They’re not subtle at all. With soft-lit shots and loving descriptions, basically they are boldly placing advertisements into the middle of their programming.

(I don’t watch Survivor, but I’m curious to know if they have found ways to sneak product placement on the ‘deserted islands’. They likely have.)

And what about when products on movies and tv look like a well known brand – i.e. a coffee shop with a green and white logo – but aren’t actually branded per se. Does Starbucks want to have coffeeshops in movies that look just like their stores but yet aren’t directly branded?

This gets me wondering - who pays who? Obviously Snapple and Ford invested in the Amazing Race – and negotiated a whole lot of in-show promotion. But does Starbucks pay to have a coffeeshop-scene in a movie – or do the directors pay Starbucks? What kind of deals and pay-outs are influencing what I see when I watch a movie or show?