The Real Thing on Reality TV

Product placement as a form of advertising remains controversial. Ad advertisement is seen as a very specific thing designed to coerce the viewer to buy a product. A not so discretely placed can of coke in a movie seems to be break faith with the movie-goer who has already paid for their ticket. In some countries such as the UK where the amount of advertising per hour is strictly limited product placement in tv shows is banned. But the law of unintended consequences will out. What about imported shows from the US? The hugely successful US version of the global franchise "American Idol" is shown in freeview channel ITV2 in the UK. I am a huge fan by the way and watched in the UK for the last three series. It has produced such stars as Jennifer Hudson and the improbably named Fantasia Barrino. It is probably not a coincidence that a program which trawls through the fame aspirations of 300m Americans and Canadians will throw up a much higher standard than the same franchise in the UK and Australia where the singing is of such a poor quality that they don’t bother making comments like “that was a little pitchy for me”.

In America the three judges, Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell (why doesn’t this man get more exposure?) have in front of them what appears to be tumblers of some refreshing liquid, occasionally sipped, probably water (maybe not Paula, the well known lush). In the UK transmitted version the obviously branded receptacles have been digitally blurred. Even when they pick them up to their lips or the cameras move they remain obscured. No doubt this is simplicity itself with modern digital technology. Yet I found myself absolutely fascinated by them. Who was the brand they were advertising in the US but were required by law to remove in the UK to protect us from accidental advertising overload? Well here’s a clue. The logo appears to be red and white. In a large tapered glass. Could it be Coka-Cola? So a large part of my viewing time in series 6 and 7 was taken up with trying to see if I could just, just work out the lettering (in a similar way I am always, but not quite able to work out the wording on the Simpsons supermarket lettering in the opening credit. No don’t tell me I’ll get it one day). Given the enormity of this program it was unlikely to be anything other than Coke and this was confirmed when I lived in the US in 2008 and was able to watch it live.

I am sure I have drunk more coke since becoming obsessed with this attempt to obscure the product placement. It was actually a bit of an anti-climax to see finally the judges sipping from clearly branded Coke tumblers. So much so that I almost instantly stopped noticing them and went back to drinking Pepsi.