At first you might think you had stumbled upon the tiniest proof of synergy. You are seated on an airplane. The stewardess trudges by with her cart, doling out drinks and bags of pretzels. You take a break from flipping through the airline magazine's lead article about "Exciting Nebraska" as a business destination. You tear open the pretzels and look out the window at the white cumuli underwing. And, in the pensive haze induced by recycled, germ-laden air and dreamy vistas, you happen to glance down and are slightly disturbed from your reverie to read, "Trust us. Don't open the window to check the weather."

It's an ad. On the pretzel bag. For the Weather Channel.

Is this some new species of meta-advertising? In an era when branding has been elevated to a cultural ideology with its own jargon, the development on the snack bag signals the emergence of a new class structure among products -- a branded proletariat and a branded gentry.

The product aristocrats are climbing upon the backs of the new serfs everywhere. Some banks narrowcast ads for other products on their ATM screens while you wait for your cash. Filling stations are selling ad space in the tiny screens on their gas pumps. One company will underwrite your monthly car payment if you permit an "autowrap," which turns your entire vehicle into a rolling billboard. Essentially, our landscape has become so dominated by advertising that the only unscarred vista left is the product itself.

The idea of putting ads on snack bags -- AKA "Brand in the Hand" advertising -- belongs to Harvey Alpert, 55, an airline-food broker based in Malibu, California. "If I were selling garments, I'd be a rep," Alpert says peppily, by way of introduction. "If I were Tom Cruise's guy, I'd be an agent. In the food business, it's a broker." For most of his career, Alpert has been the middleman who puts name-brand products in the hands of airline passengers.

"What we've convinced companies like Minute Maid to do," he explains, "is to use passengers who are strapped into their seats to try a wet sample" -- that is, the product itself. At some point, Alpert realized that what he had was an advertiser's dream: high-income passengers who were literally confined to chairs by straps and for whom the arrival of a snack occasioned tiny Skinnerian sensations of gratitude and happiness. The only thing missing was a set of those metal eyelid restraints used on Alex in A Clockwork Orange. "Remember when you were a kid and your mother gave you your cereal?" Alpert says. "Well, how many times did you read the cornflakes box?"

Most of the products that Alpert represents are from name-brand aristocrats who would not be interested in renting out their package to somebody else. Try to imagine Nike renting out space on the side of a shoe. "But we do represent one company that isn't a name brand and that doesn't care to be a name brand, called King Nut Company. It's a family-owned business in Cleveland," Alpert says. King Nut does occasionally brand its products, distributing snacks under the amiable moniker Summer Harvest. But on the Brand in the Hand bags, the Summer Harvest name can only be found in small type on the back, just beneath the paragraph that tells us the snack is made from partially hydrogenated soybeans, whey, and beet powder.