Product Placement in the theatre

This weekend I saw the Ithaca College production of Etta Jenks. It takes place in the 80's and is about of girl named Etta who moves to Los Angeles to make it as an actress and gets sucked into the porn industry.

I noticed that several times Coca-cola was mentioned, it was infact Etta's drink of choice, and she was constantly seen drinking an old fashioned coke bottle. At one point, she even mentions a school science experiment in which a tooth decays in a glass of coke. I don't know if it is necassarily a good thing for coke to be associated with the decaying of teeth or even a porn star for that matter, but nether-the-less, it was free advertisement.

Besides coke, there was no mention of any of products and the props that were used were just generic brands. A possible reason for this might be that a lot of products that were popular in the 80's are not as popular today. Therefore they would be harder for the director to find and the audience would not recognize them as easily. Coke worked perfectly though, since it was around back then and still is quite popular today.