Top Chef (4:57)
The clip above comes from Top Chef season 5 episode 3 where the contestants must change their current dish, taken from the Top Chef Cookbook, into a soup. Luckily they just happened to have multiple boxes of Swanson's broth (a sponsor of the show) for the chefs. This product is integrated in a way where the contestants must use it in order to complete the challenge. There are several mentions of the brand by the host and shots of the product forcing acknowledgement through repetition. Glad is also a sponsor of the show and the viewers are reminded at the begining of each episode of the $100,000 prize for the winner from Glad. Other brand names integrated in the show are Whole Foods, Evian, and Butterball. Top Chef also does a lot of cross promotion by using celebrities from other shows as guests. The Today Show was featured in season 5 episode 4 along with Rocco Dispirito who has a show on A&E. All three stations; NBC, Bravo and A&E have the same parent company NBC Universal.
I think these products, especially the food related ones, are integrated to lend the show and the product credibility. Top Chef is a competition and contestants are narrowed down from thousands to just 17. Having your product used by these "top" chefs and praised by and Tom Colicchio not only shows the item to a huge audience but also gives it credibility.
In my opinion Top Chef is a repeat offender of product integration especially with the close-ups of the GE appliances. It distracts from the experience of watching a competition when you cut to clips of whatever product they're plugging that week. The use of some of brands like Butterball and Whole Foods are smart and might encourage me to use them but I'm not going to go buy a Toyota because the chefs were driven around in them in season 2.
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