• Newsweek, Friday, December 2, 2005 11:45 AM

PepsiCo's Mountain Dew has taken the concept of branded entertainment to a new level that is so high up that you need a snowboard to come down. In a move that goes way beyond product placement in a movie, the soft drink is financing an entire film project and subtly injecting its brand in the movie. The film is a documentary called "First Descent" that opens this week. It's about five snowboarding stars, and while they won't be carrying cans of the Dew as they whisk down the slopes, viewers won't have to look too hard to spot the brand. Pepsi says it wants to build buzz by association. "Our goal is for this to be the seminal movie of snowboarding--we didn't want to go overboard with the product,'' says John Galloway, Pepsi's vice president of sports and media. Product shots are not in the viewer's face--a snowboarder's helmet, for example, shows the logo.

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