"Product Placements" in iCarly (4/30/2015)

One of my all time favorite shows while growing up was "iCarly", and Nickelodeon. This show is about two teenage girls (Sam and Carly) in Seattle hosting a comedy web show in Seattle. Both of the girls had pear phones that they were constantly on, that always had new updates and features in the show. As the show got older, so did I, and I began noticing similarities between their phones and the company Apple. The girls had pear computers, phones, and eventually pear pads, as did all of the other characters on the show. As Apple's iPhones, laptops, and iPad's advances, these technologies would show up in "iCarly" in the form of a pear phone. They even had a pear on the back of the phone, as iPhone have an apple on the back of theirs.
I wasn't aware of product placement at the time, but that is what I thought this to be. Obviously their pear phones were supposed to be Apple's iPhones! At one point I even thought they just mistaken the brand name and had intended to use iPhones on the show.
However, besides the obvious Apple references on the show, there are a lot more real world connections that they made, without it actually being considered placed advertising. A popular hangout for the kids on the show is The Groovy Smoothie, with interior colors similar to that of Jamba Juice. In one episode, Carly's older brother makes a giant coffee cup and fills it with coffee. The brand name on the cup? Skybucks Coffee. The design on the cup was very similar to Starbucks as well. They go out to eat in a restaurant called BF Wangs, which rhymes with popular real world restaurant PF Changs. An even more secret hidden reference: in one episode a younger character is seen reading a book titled "Nifty Shades of Beige". This is also an obvious parody of the book and now movie "50 Shades of Grey", which normally wouldn't be shown on a kids show.
Most kids shows wouldn't have nearly as much "advertising" as iCarly got away with. However, this wasn't placed advertising, it was a mimic of it. It is rare for a television show to devise a whole new phone brand, coffee brand, or even book for a kid to read. iCarly did just that. Even every episode title was formatted with the letter "i" before what happens in the episode, just like the series title.
Don't get me wrong, I was definitely surrounded with Starbucks and Apple and Jamba Juice ads all around me my entire childhood. But iCarly incorporated them in a way that made me want the products more than any commercial could. I idolized Sam and Carly since the first episode I watched. Seeing them in a giant Skybucks cup or visiting the Pear store not only reminded me of those real world products, but it made me want them because the girls had them. Product placement in television shows has not always worked for me, especially if I don't like the characters. But this show based on parodies of product placements affected me more than ever, as I still surround myself with many of those products today.

All that little Della wanted to do after this was swim in a giant Starbucks cup!