While paid product placement does exist and is widespread, this statement isn't correct. There are many examples of organic product placement, where the set/costume designer uses a particular product without any financial incentive.
They have dedicated staff to promote product placement and according to a Hollywood movie maker, "Apple won’t pay to have their products featured, but they are more than willing to hand out an endless amount of computers, iPads, and iPhones".
It is actually a very unethical practice if you think about it in monetary terms. Rather than paying the film company above the table like ethical companies usually do, they outright bribe the prop department staff by giving each of them gifts worth thousands of dollars for preferential product placement.
Who gets the stuff when the filming has finished?
Isn't that how hollywood accounting works?
I don't think it's actually a bad thing, but your analogy was weak. In your scenario, Apple gets much, much more of a benefit than bacardi would, and the bartenders get much less of a perk than the set dressers would.
Did I mischaracterize your stance?
Clearly this is not legally bribery. But giving out free bacardi and t-shirts at a bar is likely to provide less influence, and less resulting material gain, than giving macbooks to the guys who buy props.
Since you appear to enjoy picking fights with strangers, I highly recommend you switch to that site. It's a much better platform for making sure that everyone who disagrees with you knows how stupid you think they are.
Seriously though, I looked at your comment history, and the whole top page is you just arguing with people and putting down their opinions. Yuck.
One seems more like marketing, other more like bribery.
Seriously, it's pretty obvious when the technology spot has been bought by whatever means, otherwise they use no-brand completely generic devices.