I was excited to watch the snowboarding in the Olympics last night.  Just before the first boarder took to the half pipe I watched him pull out his ipod, quickly pick a song, and slide it back into his Burton jacket.  I turned to my husband, “He’s listening to his ipod  while he competes in the Olympics.  I wonder what he’s listening to.”

But the attention last night was on Shaun White, the second boarder of the night.  He’s the biggest name in snowboarding and it was his packaged feature story that led into the evening’s competition.  Anyone who was making a point to watch the Olympic snowboarding had their eyes on Shaun White.  So when he pulled out his iphone just seconds after ending his run, I had to ask, “what could be so important right now that he would need to look at his phone!?”

So I wonder, was apple behind all of this?  If so, I applaud their creativity and I recognize that this is where advertising is going.  Product placement has been around since before Elliot brought Reeses Pieces to ET but what’s changing is that products no longer just have to show up, they have to influence the viewer.  When Louis Vito pulled out his ipod, I made the association that his ipod helped him perform.  He NEEDED his ipod.

A recent Adage article talks about product placement and how common it is becoming in our everyday TV, movie and gaming content.  While it used to be stealth, a Pepsi can in the background of the set or a pair of Nike shoes on the main character, it’s now become a more influential part of our content.  Rather than being built into the content, content is being built around it.  The article claims, “At some point, ads and shows might blur so much that the notion of a ‘commercial break’ becomes a silly, antiquated thing of the past.”  If you ask me, it will be a very long time before commercials cease to exist but without a doubt, product placement will prevail and in more creative and brilliant ways than we’ve ever seen in the past.