M (er, W) MMM* - Hate it? Turn it around!

I saw this new advertising scheme for the first time in Desperate Housewives on Sunday...the use of storyline-like characters in a commercial that is all-but seamlessly inserted into the show, tricking viewers into watching it. A friend who saw the commercial inserted into Heroes told me he thought it was a new character being introduced to fans of the show! Just the kind of confusion producers worry about. Advertisers and Networks are desperate too...desperate to keep those eyeballs on the screen during commercial breaks. It's a battle as old as TV. How do we stop 'em from using the commercial breaks to run to the kitchen or the bathroom?

Of course it can backfire on 'em too. The NBC/GE researcher quoted in the story says "the rules have changed and we have to change with them." But the new-media rules have changed in another way too. If enough viewers were to promise to never to buy from advertisers who use the technique, it would end overnight. Take the pledge? Repost this? Pass it on?

[Frankly, there are really other areas where I much rather love to see a pledge like this work, like the commercial creep in theaters...more and more ads on the screen before the movie...at the same time movie tickets get more and more expensive. Or the blurring of lines between news and advertising. Or the decreasing amount of product in a container paired with higher and higher prices. But I can't see enough people willing to take a stand on those. Protesting the new ad technique, on the other hand, is a simple matter of taking a pledge that may or may not be kept. The mere statement could be enough for it to work. Just how desperate are they? Do they feel lucky?]

[*The Monday (sometimes, like today, on Wednesday) Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of timlennox.com]