Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [69]
Like this, for instance:
Open on a tennis court at an upscale retirement community. A sixtyish man and woman in white tennis togs, Steve and Rita, greet a sixtyish single man, Brad.
STEVE: Hey, Brad, where’s your better half?
BRAD (frowning): Well, she’s not holding up so well.
RITA: Is Mary’s sporadically twitching pinkie toe syndrome acting up again?
BRAD (shakes his head, sadly): No. Thanks to Rigorto, her STPTS is under control, and believe me, that was on the verge of becoming a slight nuisance. But the funny thing is, also thanks to Rigorto, her anus has been leaking like a sieve.
STEVE: Ouch. But my doctor said that there’s only a slight chance of anal leakage with Rigorto.
BRAD (laughs): Tell that to our white four-hundred-thread-count cotton Indian sheets. And the white leather passenger seat of my antique Aston Martin.
Cut to Mary in her room, quietly weeping, staring out the window at her friends and husband in their dry brilliant white shorts. Cut to her non-twitching pinkie toe, then pull back to reveal that she is wearing a giant diaper with the Rigorto logo on the back.
ANNOUNCER/V-O: That’s right. While Rigorto can occasionally remedy an otherwise-innocuous and non-life-threatening condition, it can also make a real mess of your gastrointestinal tract, your social life, and your wardrobe.
Cut to a mandatory negative-reinforcement demo: dark coffee poured upon a piece of white muslin cloth that browns from the middle out.
SUPER/TYPE: Dramatization, actual and leakage may be significantly more explosive.
Cut to the tennis court, where Steve and Rita are crushing Brad, running him ragged. After a brutal point, Rita looks at the entrance of their building.
Cut to Mary, stepping outside.
Cut back to
STEVE: Well, it looks like we may finally have a game after all!
Mary takes a few more tentative steps toward them, but stops as a look of horror comes over her face. She clutches the back of her shorts, turns, and runs.
A/V-O: Rigorto. Anal leakage is a distinct possibility.
Including the drug ads, I was exposed to fourteen commercials (392) during the nightly news.
Whither Prime Time?
When I was a boy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, one of the only things that helped alleviate the anxiety of the end of summer and the return to school was the well-publicized and highly anticipated return of the network-TV season.
But now the concepts of a fall TV season and prime time in general are bordering on obsolete. The problem isn’t that people hate the programs. Indeed, many shows are being seen by more people than ever. The problem is how and when people are watching them, which is basically whenever the hell they want. And often without commercial interruption.
The reasons why—including the emergence of cable, video games, the zapper, podcasts, cell phones, YouTube, the Internet, the DVR, On Demand, and countless other entertainment options vying for consumer eyeballs—have been well documented. Also well documented is the extent to which networks are going to try to retain viewership and, more important, the advertising dollars without which their shows would not exist.
At the 2007 Network Upfront Week in New York City, network spokespeople went to great lengths not just to tout their new shows but to reassure advertisers that they were doing everything possible to keep viewers watching, especially during the dreaded traditional commercial breaks. Among the concepts showcased and eventually employed was Fox’s introduction of an animated cabdriver whose job was to link ads and programming, or the CW Television Network’s “content wraps,” which mixed sponsors’ products