Brands keep blurring the line between the real and the fictional

The world of thirtysomething, where a fictional ad agency created campaigns for faux brands, is starting to look positively quaint. Well, it was the '80s.
  Now, there's nary a movie or TV show about the ad business that isn't plastered with real-life brands, and surrounded by their multi-tentacled marketing campaigns. All that Victoria's Secret face-time in Perfect Stranger, the Halle Berry/Bruce Willis thriller that also name-dropped real-life ad agency Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners," was no accident.
  The just-launched TNT drama Trust Me, with Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanaugh as Chicago ad execs, will weave Dove hair-care products and Rolling Rock beer through the season. The Emmy darling Mad Men has had prominent integrations, including Heineken, with ad wiz Don Draper figuring out how to push the beer to suburban housewives like his own.
  And the Mark Burnett reality show Jingles is in the works, where contestants will form their own mini ad agencies and come up with slogans, musical or otherwise, for sponsor brands. It's the new paradigm: The entertainment is an ad, and the ads are the entertainment.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley